Money Power And The People

An “engaging and well-researched study [of] ordinary people who joined together to challenge financial institutions” (Choice). Banks and bankers are hardly the most beloved institutions and people in this country. With its corruptive influence on politics and stranglehold on the American economy, Wall Street is held in high regard by few outside the financial sector. But the pitchforks raised against this behemoth are largely rhetorical: We rarely see riots in the streets or public demands for an equitable and democratic banking system that result in serious national changes. Yet the situation was vastly different a century ago, as Christopher W. Shaw shows. This book upends the conventional thinking that financial policy in the early twentieth century was set primarily by the needs and demands of bankers. Shaw shows that banking and politics were directly shaped by the literal and symbolic investments of the grassroots. This engagement remade financial institutions and the national economy, through populist pressure and the establishment of federal regulatory programs and agencies like the Farm Credit System and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Shaw reveals the surprising groundswell behind seemingly arcane legislation, as well as the power of the people to demand serious political repercussions for the banks that caused the Great Depression. One result of this sustained interest and pressure was legislation and regulation that brought on a long period of relative financial stability, with a reduced frequency of economic booms and busts. Ironically, this stability led to the decline of the very banking politics that brought it about. Giving voice to a broad swath of American figures, including workers, farmers, politicians, and bankers alike, Money, Power, and the People recasts our understanding of what might be possible in balancing the needs of the people with those of their financial institutions.

The Cold War was fought between “state socialism” and “the free market.” That fluctuating relationship between public power and private money continues today, unfolding in new and unforeseen ways during the economic crisis. Nine case studies -- from Southern Africa, South Asia, Brazil, and Atlantic Africa – examine economic life from the perspective of ordinary people in places that are normally marginal to global discourse, covering a range of class positions from the bottom to the top of society. The authors of these case studies examine people’s concrete economic activities and aspirations. By looking at how people insert themselves into the actual, unequal economy, they seek to reflect human unity and diversity more fully than the narrow vision of conventional economics.

"The Money Power" contains two classic books on geopolitics, "Pawns in the Game" and "Empire of the City", which present the thesis that the wars and revolutions of modern times have been engineered by an English-speaking finance oligarchy to perpetuate their balance of power over the world. They are the power behind the British throne and the American government. Behind a mask of liberal democracy, their method is subversion, destruction of the old world order, and the humiliation of all rival power centres. The money power controls world politics, behind the scenes and in full view. It is a corrupt, cynical oligarchy that buys all the governments it can - with their own funds. This power of money also stares us in the face as a relentless effort to determine every aspect of our family life, work and values, magnetising everything. In "Pawns in the Game," Wm. Guy Carr sets out his famous Three World Wars scenario. WWI was planned to topple the Russian and German empires and set up the conflict between Fascism and Bolshevism. WWII was to eliminate Germany as a world power and set up Israel instead. WWIII, which we are now leading up to, is planned to mutually annihilate Zionism and Islam in a global conflict that bankrupts the entire world, ending in absolute rule by the Money Masters. Carr emphasises the role of the Illuminati in carrying out this plot, while Knuth's "Empire of the City" focuses on the British Empire and its balance of power intrigues.

Perhaps America's first celebrated economist, Irving Fisher-for whom the Fisher equation, the Fisher hypothesis, and the Fisher separation theorem are named-staked an early claim to fame with his revival, in this 1912 book, of the "quantity theory of money." An important work of 20th-century economics, this work explores: the circulation of money against goods the various circulating media the mystery of circulating credit how a rise in prices generates a further rise influence of foreign trade on the quantity of money the problem of monetary reform and much more. American economist IRVING FISHER (1867-1947) was professor of political economy at Yale University. Among his many books are Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices (1892), The Rate of Interest (1907), Why Is the Dollar Shrinking? A Study in the High Cost of Living (1914), and Booms and Depressions (1932).

Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum. Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

The difficulty which all the medieval Kings experienced in greater or less degree was the establishing of themselves in the People's love. The King needed the People as much as the People needed the King, but it was ever the object of interested parties to hold them asunder. And so was witnessed a perpetual struggle between, on the one hand, King and Church, anxious alike to hold their servants and ministers in subjection to duty, and, on the other hand, unruly servants and ministers, barons and prelates, seeking means of sustaining themselves in revolt against both spiritual and temporal authority, and so very often becoming allied to the financial powers. Money from an early time showed itself the enemy of Kingship, in which it recognized the bulwark against its operations. Money became concerned, like the rebellious nobles and prelates who were often its tools, to hold the King and his People apart and make them both dependent upon its own power. It was from this danger that Richelieu delivered France at the moment when, in England, a triumphant oligarchy based upon the City of London was hurrying King Charles I to the scaffold.

Twenty years ago Austin, Texas was a small, unassuming city whose greatest distinctions were being the state capital and the home of the University of Texas. Today Austin is touted in such places as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times as one of the fastest-growing cities in America. Its population shot up from 186,000 in 1960 to more than 700,000 in 1987. It is home to such notable companies as IBM, Motorola, Lockhead, and Tracor, and in 1983 Austin beat out scores of American cities to attract the glamorous high tech research consortium known as MCC.

Have campaign finance reform laws actually worked? Is money less influential in electing candidates today than it was thirty years ago when legislation was first enacted? Absolutely not, argues Rodney A. Smith in this passionately written, fact-filled, and provocative book. According to Smith, the laws have had exactly the opposite of their intended effect. They have increased the likelihood that incumbents in the House and Senate will be reelected, and they have greatly diminished the chances that candidates who are not wealthy will be elected. Smith's claims are supported by convincing data; he collected and analyzed information about all federal elections since 1920. These data show clearly that money matters now more than ever. Smith thinks that reform legislation has created a new inequality for candidates that, if left unchecked, threatens to destroy the American electoral process by obliterating the foundational principle of free speech. He argues that "money buys speech" and when candidates lack money to buy media time and space they are effectively silenced. Their inability to "speak freely" violates the most significant intentions of our nation's founders: that a sovereign citizenry elect its own leaders based on a free exchange of ideas. For Smith, campaign finance reform has unwittingly unbalanced the checks and balances created by the Framers of the Constitution. After presenting a detailed historical overview of how we have reached the present crisis, Smith proposes a simple solution: institute a process that completely discloses relevant information about campaign donors and recipients of donations. All disclosures would be available to the media, which would be able to investigate and report them fully. Only then, Smith believes, will the United States have the opportunity to be the democratic republic that its founders intended.