The End of Money and the Future of Civilization
The first edition of my book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, was published by Chelsea Green Publishing in 2009. While it remains
as relevant today as it was when first published the printed book has been out of print for several years. But, having had the rights reverted to me by my publisher, I am making the entire book available for free in PDF format. You can read it or download it HERE. If you would like a hard copy of the first edition used copies can still be found on Amazon.com, Abe books, Thrift books and elsewhere.
Better still, you can avail yourself of the new revised and expanded 2024 edition which I have been working on for almost two years and is almost complete. Eighteen chapters have already been posted and can be freely read or download HERE.My previous books, as published, may be freely accessed in digital format by clicking the title below.
Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender (2001)
New Money For Healthy Communities (1994)
Money and Debt: a Solution to the Global Crisis (1980)
Collectors may find used and some new print copies of my books as published, on amazon.com and elsewhere online. Start by clicking on the title below:
Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender (2001)
Beyond Money- An Honest Money System
- The Money Problem–A Fix
- The End of Money Explained
- The amazing usefulness of AI! Rethinking Money Cretion
- An Economy That Shapes Who We Become-Tim Jenkin explains
- What to do in the face of the dominant systems of health and agriculture that are making us sick?
- Againt all odds!
- Facing the facts–politics and monetary gimmicks cannot overcome the limits imposed by the real economy
- Your weight and your health
- This is perhaps the most important speech of the decade on international relations and our prospective future.
Category Archives: The Political Money System
Rep. Ron Paul introduces bill to repeal legal tender laws
In his weekly column, Texas Straight Talk, Congressman Ron Paul reports that he has introduced a bill to repeal legal tender laws, which would force the Federal Reserve note to compete with “alternate currencies” in the market and help to reign in the profligate borrow-and-spend policies of both parties.
Who is the world’s most powerful person?
Congressman Ron Paul says it’s TIME magazine person-of-the-year, FED Chairman Ben Bernanke. While I agree that Bernanke is more powerful than the President, he’s only the front man and a hired hand for the real power — the banking elite and hidden oligarchy who’s agenda is to arrogate to themselves ever more power and control.
The level of fraud, theft, and expropriation being suffered by the American people today has reached such astounding proportions as to be almost laughable. The US is on the verge of financial ruin, civil unrest, and political despotism.
As that drama unfolds, it is crucial that people remain calm and behave in ways that express their highest ideals. It is time to cooperate and share and organize ourselves into mutual support associations to provide all of us with the things we need to thrive as we transition to “the Butterfly economy.” The following prayer from long-time friend and colleague, Rev. John Papworth, expresses very well the kind of sentiment that should inspire us. – t.h.g.
LORD make me an instrument of Thy war against evil;
Where there is vandalism against Thy creation,
Let me campaign to stop it.
Where there is sabotage of Thy genetic ordainings,
Let me fight like hell to prevent it and to safeguard Thy works.
Where there is conspiracy of boardroom greed to dominate and destroy Thy creation,
Let me join with others to wage an unremitting struggle to oppose it.
Where giant political and money forces combine to control local neighbourhood life,
Let me be quick to affirm the overriding need for strong community power so that Thy moral laws may prevail.
Where there is passivity, deference and conformism to the giant powers of darkness which are degrading society and its individual members,
Let me be a powerful witness to oppose them.
DIVINE MASTER, grant that I may not so much seek to live a quiet life as to be in the vanguard of those who would enhance life, not so much to grab as to give, not to evade my social obligations as to shoulder them, not to be afraid of power as to be imbued with courage to control it with others for worthy ends.
For it is in striving to act with love that we affirm love, and in devoting ourselves to noble causes we are redeemed, and in giving ourselves utterly to the service of truth, beauty and the well-being of our neighbours, we rise to the life immortal. AMEN.
(Based on an old, mush loved, prayer of St. Francis of Assisi).
JOHN PAPWORTH
Posted in Finance and Economics, The Political Money System
Tagged Ben Bernanke, dollar, Fed, power, Ron Paul
Thomas Greco’s Video Interview with Daniel Pinchbeck
Here are some segments of an interview I had with Daniel Pinchbeck during the Economics of Peace Conference in Sonoma, California in October of 2009. This interview was recorded by Haig Varjabedian
You can watch the entire interview in four parts on Vimeo.
Daniel Pinchbeck is an author and the founder of RealitySandwich.com, a website forum regarding experiences and initiatives surrounding the evolution of consciousness.
I also did an interview with Regina Meredith of Conscious Media Network.
Posted in Basic Concepts, Developing Alternatives, Prescriptions, The Political Money System
Tagged bailout, Banking, credit clearing, Greco, inflation, interest, meltdown, money, Pinchbeck
Richard C. Cook on the Economic Crisis
Richard C. Cook had posted a new article titled,
The Economic Crisis and What Must be Done
In it, he provides an excellent summary of our current situation and how we arrived at it, along with some concrete proposals.
On the legislative front, he call for Congress to pass what he calls the “Cook Plan.” This would provide relief payments “to each adult of $1,000 a month until the crisis lifted. This money could be earmarked for goods and services produced within the U.S. and used to capitalize a new series of community development banks.”
I could support such a plan but I see no hope of getting it through Congress. Even so, it would require a reallocation of budget payments from bank and corporate bailouts and military spending.
His second proposal is much more feasible and in line with my own prescriptions:
“Another method increasingly being used within the U.S. today is local and regional credit clearing exchanges and the use of local currencies or “scrip.” Use of such currencies could be enhanced by legislation at the state and federal levels allowing these currencies to be used for payment of taxes and government fees as well as payment of mortgages and other forms of bank debt. The credit clearing exchanges could be organized as private non-profit regional currency co-operatives similar to credit unions.”
However I see no need for government involvement in this approach. I would prefer that governments keep hands off until the exchanges have enough strength to bend legislation in a favorable direction. Too much government attention too early will result in repression of emergent exchange alternatives, as has been typical in the past.
Cook’s article provides invaluable background, especially for anyone who is new to the study of “the money problem.” I strongly recommend it. You can read it here.
West Coast Tour Presentations
My speaking tour of the west coast began with the Economics of Peace conference in Sonoma, California, and continued with stops in Portland, Seattle, Salt Spring Island, BC, Whidbey Island, and Vashon Island, Washington. Most of these have been recorded and will eventually be posted.
My Seattle presentation at Elliott Bay Bookstore is available for viewing now. It was video-recorded by Todd Boyle who has inserted the slide graphics and posted it on vimeo. I’ve added a link to it on the sidebar to the right under My Audio-visual Presentations.
Congressman Ron Paul tells the truth about the Federal Reserve
Congressman Ron Paul tells the truth about the Federal Reserve and its power to evade Congressional oversight. Watch it here.
Review and Opinion by Richard C. Cook
Richard C. Cook’s review of my book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, combines some of my main points with his own insightful observations, and has stirred up a lot of interest. Besides appearing on his own website, the review has been picked up by a number of others, including Global Research, The Market Oracle, Dandelion Salad, After Downing Street, Snuffy Smith’s Blog, and Disident Voice.
Cook’s own work is worth following closely. He a former federal government analyst who writes on public policy issues. His website is www.richardccook.com. His latest book is We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform (Tendril Press, 2009). His career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury Department. He also taught history at the Field School in Washington, D.C., and owned and operated an organic farm for 10 years while commuting to work from rural Virginia.
Posted in Finance and Economics, My activities, The Political Money System
Tagged money, review, Richard C. Cook
Throwing BRIC(K)s at the Dollar
On October 6, the British newspaper, The Independent, dropped a bombshell by publishing an article by long-time middle-east correspondent Robert Fisk, called The demise of the dollar. Fisk reported that:
… Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.
Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.
Eamon Javers of Politico.com is now raising questions about Fisk and the underlying motivations for publishing such an article at this particular time (Whodunit? Sneak attack on U.S. dollar).
With the current uneasiness about the global financial situation and ongoing concern about the weakness of the dollar, markets can easily be manipulated using stories such as this in mass circulation media. I will not speculate about the reasons or the truthfulness of Fisk’s report, but the handwriting is clearly on the wall. The days of dollar dominance are over. The financial powers-that-be know that, and you can be sure they have a plan. The successor to the dollar is already being readied for prime-time, but will the emerging economies accept it? That is the question. — t.h.g.
Posted in Geo-politics, The Political Money System
The Real Reasons Behind Fed Secrecy
In one of his recent updates, Congressman Ron Paul says, “An audit would expose the Fed as a massive fraud perpetrated on this country, enriching a privileged few bankers at the top of our economic food chain, and leaving the rest of us with massively devalued dollars which we are forced to use by law.” You can listen to it here.
Posted in Banking, The Political Money System
Ron Paul and the Federal Reserve
Ron Paul IS a national treasure. He is virtually the only member of Congress who has consistently and forcefully argued that the central banking system (the FED) needs to be eliminated. At the very least, the Fed must be accountable to the people. It is a private company that operates in secret.
Central banking from its very beginning (notably the founding of Bank of England) was designed to enrich the bankers and enable the political powers to circumvent popular control. The bankers are enriched by their monopoly control of our credit on which they require us to pay them interest when we “borrow” it back from them. The politicians get to spend virtually as much as they want to enrich themselves and their minions, to oppress the people, and to fight wars and undermine popular government and community self-determination.
The Fed enables all of this then tries to manage the effects of these crimes, giving us both depressions and inflation of the currency. That amounts simply to deciding who will be made to pay the price. On the one hand, small businesses are made to fail and workers become unemployed when banks restrict credit to the private productive sector, while at the same time lavishing credit on the government, bailing out financial behemoths, and financing mega-corporation that are deemed “too big to let fail.” On the other hand, the Fed will monetize government debt as needed to enable profligate government spending to continue. That monetary inflation naturally causes prices to increase, diminishing the purchasing power of everyone who lives on fixed incomes or has dollar denominated savings. In the extreme (hyper-inflation), the middle-class gets wiped out financially.
The one thing that NO ONE wants to talk about is LEGAL TENDER. It is legal tender laws that compel acceptance of debased political currencies. Without legal tender, those inferior currencies would quickly be displaced in the market by private and community exchange media that are properly issued on the basis of real value. This is happening anyway, as parallel exchange systems are being developed and used, but legal tender and general ignorance about money, banking, and credit put them at a disadvantage.
While the “Austrian School” of economics has managed to gain some attention, it’s too bad the “German School” has remained obscure. Names like Rittershausen, Beckerath, Zander, Meulen, and Milhaud, should become household words, along with E. C. Riegel. Their writings on free money and banking (i.e., free of monopoly control) are available at http://reinventingmoney.com.
These issues are largely covered in my various presentations that can be seen as movies or slide shows on my blog, http://beyondmoney.net.
— t.h.g.
Posted in Banking, Finance and Economics, The Political Money System
Tagged Beckerath, Federal Reserve, free money, Meulen, Milhaud, Riegel, Ron Paul, Zander
Beyond Money 