The Web of Debt : Must Read!!!

I've just finished reading Ellen Hodgson Brown's book "The Web of Debt". It is absolutely superb, and I can strongly recommend it. OK, it's 529 pages. But it's 529 of superbly documented argumentation, absolutely stuffed full of really interesting ideas. You can get hold of the 5th edition of the book (it was first published in 2007) by ordering a pdf file from this site for just $9.95.

I thought I had some pretty radical ideas : replacing the existing tax system by a universal financial transaction tax, paying off the entire national debt with central bank lending...

But Ellen Brown has some even more radical ideas up her sleeve. Specifically, she argues that if governments are allowed to print the money needed by the economy (rather that the current system where money creation is entirely at the whim of commercial banks, who create money out of nothing everytime that they can find someone to take on debt), the system can work with no tax at all!

There have even been a few instances in history where governments managed to impose a system where they generated their own money, rather than having to borrow from the banking system and get caught in the "web of debt".

For example, the founding fathers in the colonies issued their own money, and it worked beautifully. So beautifully, that the English decided to put an end to it. They flooded the colonies with counterfeit money, and ended up going to war.

A second case was Abraham Lincoln's decision to print his own Greenbacks during the American Civil War. That also worked brilliantly, but the banking interests soon put an end to it. And we know what happened to Lincoln.

More recently, Adolf Hitler succeeded in kickstarting an economic miracle in Germany by issuing his own money - MEFO bills, or "Feder money". Germany went from a basket case with hyperinflation to a superpower capable of taking on the allies in a decade. While we must condemn Hitler's racist motivations, it is difficult to hide the fact that his economic strategy was remarkably effective.

Finally, the incredible economic success of China can also be seen as a manifestation of the fact that they refused to play the standard game of borrowing money from west and decided to control their own economy.

Ellen Brown argues that much of the misery in the world can be directly linked to the activities of a small group of incredibly powerful figures working behind the scenes to rig the system in their favour. The center pin of the whole edifice is the fact that commercial banks can create money out of thin air, lend it to people, businesses and governments and claim the interest payments. She is 100% right. This insanity must stop.