Bank Robbery: Economists and the Banking System (part 2: Adam Smith, some early Americans, and Friedrich List)
10 October, 2015Chapter 5 (Read the Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 and Chapter 4) This chapter is about economics in transition. Economics means literally 'housekeeping' and most early writers on economics (roughly speaking before Adam Smith, 1723-90) treated it that way. They worried about a nation's solvency, whether fairness generally prevailed in economic dealings, and whether the vulnerable were sufficiently [...]
Bank Robbery: Economists and the Banking System (from Medieval times to Adam Smith)
10 July, 2015Chapter 4 (Read the Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3) 1. From Medieval times to Adam Smith Over the years, many economists have noticed how bank-created money skews the economy, affecting distribution of power and wealth across time and influencing what gets manufactured, built, destroyed. Their observations – and often the economists too – have gone [...]
Bank Robbery: Law and the Banking System
19 May, 2015Chapter 3 The first chapter of this book described how private commercial bankers came to provide almost all of the money supply in the West. The second described how this process has affected who is rich and who is poor, culminating in the extremes of wealth and poverty we experience today. This chapter looks at [...]
Bank Robbery: Inequality and the Banking System
2 April, 2015Chapter 2 (You can read the Chapter 1 here) Extreme inequality is the main economic, political and cultural evil of our times. This chapter is about how bank-credit, as money newly-allocated and carrying an interest charge, increases inequality, transferring wealth and power from ordinary people to governments and the very rich. It is an old [...]
Bank Robbery: Banks and the Money Supply
27 February, 2015Chapter 1 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' Sensible advice, especially when it comes to tinkering with the money supply: with laws about how money is made, how we get it, how we spend it. What would happen if the financial system was dismantled or thrown out of joint? Would we be able to [...]