13 thoughts on “Reading List for Alternative Banking”

1. Here is a suggestion for the reading list. While this book is out of print…the author and the subject matter are invaluable. You can find used copies on Amazon (about $99.+/-….it is worth every cent.
   from the inside jacket cover: “You might consider this a mystery book or a crime book.It’s about money –mostly your money –and about bankers, politician, theft and fraud….in what may be the biggest crime of history.’

   MONEY by James E. Ewart
   Principia Publishing, Inc.
   Seattle, WA.

   Also:

   The Creature from Jekyl Island [how the FED came into being]
   by: G. Edward Griffin

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2. Check out these two extremely comprehensive reviews of books on the financial crisis:
   http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1949908 and
   http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1989347

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3. My suggestion for the reading list is:

   Economics for Real people by Gene Callahan. After Reading this book I was able to understand what a true “clean slate” would look like and how to spot the seeds of true causes of booms, and busts; how new rules would change the behavior of the players; understand how one change would cause excesses and or shortages in other things (including money), and much more. This is an excellent book that can help readers stay ahead of the game when it comes to medium and long term economic trends.

   http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Real-People-Gene-Callahan/dp/0945466412/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333336199&sr=1-1

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4. I will try to read as much as I can from your reading list, but I would like to know what I can do to help. I strongly believe that while the U.S. does need a financial system, because society is too complex to do without, it does not need to be a system that sucks the lifeblood from the rest of society. I also believe that financial reform should go hand in hand with campaign finance reform, because Citizens United sold out our democracy to big business, or is in the process of doing so. Thirdly, I strongly believe that these two items are what the Occupy Movement should focus on, because the way the system is now, money really is the root of all evil. What can I do to help? I’m an unemployed 46-year-old white female suburbanite. I can make time to do things, but I would rather they be effective than media gimmicks.

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5. Another highly recommended book is All The Devils Are Here by Bethany McClain and Joe Nocera. It’s an excellent comprehensive history of the financial crisis. In fact, if you can only read one book about the financial crisis, I think this one would be the one.

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6. First, thank you. Kathy, for such common sense everything.
   As someone who has struggled to grasp finance and economics, (and anything with numbers in it) except from time to time having flashes of not feeling so thick in the head when economists and financiers have obviously got it so wrong, I’m finally reading Ellen Hodgson Brown’s ‘Web of Debt’ and it’s opening up a window, breaching the firewall, something! It’s accessibly written and absorbing, has a p.o.v. as the title suggests but also the a backup battery citations. And Frank L.Baum’s allegorical Wizard of Oz (the first moview i saw as a child) lives on.
   I’m watching the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs hearing with Mary Shapiro, Chair SEC and Gary Gensler re Derivatives Market Regulations and Oversight on C-SPAN (long live Brian Lamb!) Where can one read notes, or report out of the OWS group that is liaising with the SEC. as referred in the excellent FRONTLINE docu.?
   Mille grazie per tutti

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7. Pingback: Greetings, Updates, and Don’t Hit the Screen When You Read About “Moral Hazard” | Alternative Banking

8. Great list. Thanks , got a lot of reading to do.

   (A). However I am surprised “Web Of Debt” is not on the list.
   (B).And how could you go on to a “betterment of mankind” within reading
   Michael Hudson “Compound Interest” ( http://michael-hudson.com/2001/04/the-mathematical-economics-of-compound-rates-of-interest-a-four-thousand-year-overview-part-ii/
   (C) Frederick Soddy
   From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia…..
   “…In four books written from 1921 to 1934, Soddy carried on a “quixotic campaign for a radical restructuring of global monetary relationships”, offering a perspective on economics rooted in physics—the laws of thermodynamics, in particular—and was “roundly dismissed as a crank”. While most of his proposals – “to abandon the gold standard, let international exchange rates float, use federal surpluses and deficits as macroeconomic policy tools that could counter cyclical trends, and establish bureaus of economic statistics (including a consumer price index) in order to facilitate this effort” – are now conventional practice, his critique of fractional-reserve banking still “remains outside the bounds of conventional wisdom”. Soddy wrote that financial debts grew exponentially at compound interest …

   Justaluckyfool asks “…while most of his proposals are now conventional practice…”, why is he ignored? Is the world really flat, does the Sun revolve around the world, are banks solvent ? ?
   http://archive.org/stream/roleofmoney032861mbp/roleofmoney032861mbp_djvu.txt
   THE
   ROLE OF MONEY
   WHAT IT SHOULD BE,
   CONTRASTED WITH WHAT IT HAS BECOME
   By
   FREDERICK SODDY
   M.A. (Oxon) ; LL.D. (Glasgow) ; F.R.S. ; Nobel Laureate
   in Chemistry, 1921 ; Author of ” Wealth,
   Virtual Wealth , and Debt ” ;
   Printed in 1926,1933

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9. Bailout by Neil Barofsky

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10. What about Proudhon, seems like the classic for alternative banking.

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11. Great reading list. I would add Ellen Brown’s “Web of Debt”; also check out the Public Banking Institute, http://publicbankinginstitute.org/

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12. Some suggestions for the list …

    Warren Mosler’s Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy …
    link to .pdf: http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf

    Dr. L. Randall Wray’s Modern Money Theory …
    link here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0230368891

    Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. John

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13. We are at “Peak Money.” It’s not a recession, it is the financial equivalent of climate change. We’re passing the limits to endless growth on a finite planet. How to share a shrinking economic “pie” is part of the challenge for the 21st century.

    Richard Heinberg, The End of Growth
    http://www.postcarbon.org

    Rob Dietz, Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources.
    http://www.steadystate.org

    Chris Martenson
    The Crash Course
    on energy and money
    http://www.peakprosperity.com/crashcourse

    James Kunstler, Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation
    http://www.kunstler.com

    “In the Soviet Union, government controls industry. In the United States, industry controls government. That is the principal structural difference between the two great oligarchies of our time.”
Industrialism, whether of the capitalist or socialist coloration, is the basic tyrant of the modern age.
    – Edward Abbey

    I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about “Where do we go from here,” that we honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, “Who owns the iron ore?” You begin to ask the question, “Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?” These are questions that must be asked.
    Now, don’t think that you have me in a “bind” today. I’m not talking about communism.
    What I’m saying to you this morning is that communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problems of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together.
    
– Martin Luther King, Jr., “Where do we go from here?”
King’s last, and most radical, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) presidential address

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