A new look at the Federal Reserve
346020
One of the most interesting aspects of this thriller is the discussion of the Federal Reserve System.  Professional spies, kidnappers and assassins abound.  This one will keep you up at night.
2200543
I came across Ron Paul a few years ago when I saw him talking on TV, most likely CNN (considering he is an "Austrian," it must have been during his presidential campaign). I cannot recall exactly what was discussed, but he caught my interest.

The book is about MONEY, the forbidden issue in (American) politics and the FED, the visible hand manipulating money supply and interest rates.

The author starts, among other things, with the discussion of the origin and nature of the FED. He then shares his conversations with two Fed chairmen (Greenspan and Bernanke). At the end he proceeds to present 4 different cases for ending the Fed (moral, constitutional, economic, and libertarian).

I agree with him that the MORAL case should suffice. Nobody should have the right to redistribute the wealth by inflating the money supply. ECONOMIC argument only makes the already strong case even stronger. Loose monetary policies of the Fed coupled with various governmental policies distorting credit markets even further are responsible for malinvestments, which lead to boom-bust cycles, with the boom part being phony, artificial and the bust part being painful, real.

There are many good books on money and credit (and central banking). Ron Paul's End the Fed is one of them. I think it is well written and worth the time. It should help you in your search for the answers to issues you may have long been wondering about, such as:

a) What is the true role of the FED (or any central bank for that matter)? Why do we have to have it?
b) Why is low inflation - in the "modern" (political) sense of the word, that is, rising prices - good, even desirable and why deflation - falling prices - is such a menace for economists (those close to politicians anyway)?
c) Why is inflation - by the "old" (nonpolitical) definition, that is, expansion of money supply (money production) - necessary?
d) Where are the free market forces behind interest rates?
e) Who exactly are the beneficiaries of the (fiat) paper money system?

The whole idea of (fully) ELASTIC money and one institution having monopoly on it must seem DUBIOUS to every intelligent layman.
1246722
Most Americans have no idea how money is created or how the Fed affects their daily lives. They need to read this book to understand.
3926272
I enjoyed reading this tome which covers all facets of the economic problem. It was refreshing to see a new angle that blames dysfunctional pseudo markets for the weak recovery. It is well-written and enables the dismal science to go from glum to fun.
2720126
This book was interesting & informative.  Although I have no background in finance or economics, I found this book fairly easy to understand.  I will probably read a couple of the books referenced in this book to get a better picture of the Fed.  It's amazing how many people think the Fed is part of the government.
1373277
There is a very short list of reliable histories of The Federal Reserve Bank of U.S.  One other is a multi-volume history by Bray Hammond.  Hammond's first volume is required reading on the subject.  After that his work is short and lacking economic insight.  I believe Hammond's later work was affected by bad health.  Again, Meltzer is both authoritative and a good read.
2921642
After the 2008 crash, TARP, and all the other alphabet list of Fed intervention and political machination, I immersed myself in learning what is really happening with our markets and country.  This book provides a solid foundation for that understanding.  It breaks new ground in identifying specific causes, and unnecessary prolongation, of the Great Depression. Smoot-Hawley tariffs and the Crash of 1929 are identified as mercantilist actions which were then compounded by wave upon wave of destructive economic legislative and executive actions, assuring the decade long Great Depression.  It traces from 1880 to the present the forces which drain capital from the middle class by using government influence.  Official malfeasance which serves the interests of the mercantilist is occurring at an alarming rate today and portends the end of our Republic if allowed to continue unchecked.  Framed in the perspective of classical economics, it lifts the curtain on the forces that actually determine markets and events.  It is a wake-up call for anyone alarmed by the current political and financial turmoil.
1131859
Good book for an understandable overview of  the Fed and how it operates. Although the title of the book is "The Case Against the Fed" the majority of the book involves the history of how the Federal Reserve actually came about.  Of course that needs to be understood to see why it was forced upon the U.S. by Wall Street bankers and their "hired gun" economists.

When the Fed prints or writes a check on itself, it is no different than counterfeiting - the effect on the money supply and the economy is the same. Whoever has the dollars first benefits at the expense of those at the end of the chain.  That's what classical economists overlooked: increasing the money supply redistributes wealth.

So instead of the banking system being self-correcting, with the Fed in charge, it could now inflate during recessions, which in the past had eliminated excesses by liquidating unsound investments.  Business cycles would get more severe.

FDIC insurance is a fraud, since the payment to collapsed banks is basically an uninsurable risk.  This is why the S&L crisis of the 1908s destroyed the FSLIC.

Through the years, all restraints have been removed from the Fed, which now can do literally whatever it wants. We cannot count on the Fed to control inflation, they are the reason we have inflation.  The author also shows how we can eliminate the Fed with very little impact on the current banking system.

I've got a degree in economics, and this should be required reading.  It is extremely relevant to our current banking meltdown.
3451617
Animal Spirits is a excellent book on what drives the economy and why. Fairness,corruption,money illusion and storytelling are the Animal Spirits that the authors believe lead to lack of confidence or over-confidence, which in turn leads to depressions or recoveries. Areas covered----the Federal Reserve. How and why the Fed raises or lowers interst rates and controls the money supply. Why Americans under-save for retirement. What caused the current credit crunch and housing problems. What causes the real estate markets to go through cycles. Animal Spirits is a good start for anyone wanting to understand the economy. The Secrets of Economic Indicators is another fine book that is a little more in-depth about the economy.
3878226
A very interesting  insight into the real aim of the Federal Reserve System and the IMF.  It is all about Banking cartels to limit the small banker from being successful and put the success of the big banks squarely on the shoulders of the taxpayers.
4336222
I was aware that banks create money when they lend. I though the government had ways to limit and control this process. Moderising Money has relieved me of this misunderstanding. The ability of banks to create money seems like a perpetual motion machine and like that mythical machine friction eventually catches up. This book makes it obvious why a debt default crisis creates rapid deflation. Most money is based on debt so when the debt is in default then the money based on that debt disappears. Quantitative Easing and the printing press seem to be the only way the government can counter deflation. Modernising Money explains how our elected government can take back control over money from non-elected bankers. The suggestion at the height of the recent financial crisis to have the treasury mint a trillion dollar coin and then deposit it in the U. S. Government Treasury is not as far fetched an idea as it may seem to many people.
2317441
Friedman has written a classic book on capitalism that has sold over half a million copy. The most interesting element of his book is that Friedman has accused the Federal Reserve Bank to be responsible for the depression of the 1930s due to their lack of interference by not helping the failed banks and by contracting the money supply. The Federal Reserve Bank is in charge of creating money whenever it is needed, in order to prevent such occurences as major recessions and depression.(The Federal Reserve Bank is embodied in five to six privately owned banks in Europe and America that took over the central financing of the United States in 1913 during the Woodrow wilson presidency when the Federal Reserve act was passed, which marked the beginning of the privatization of American financial and political institutions into the hands of the global corporate world).
Friedman has borrowed most of his concepts on capitalism and freedom from the father of free market economy the brilliant Austrian economist Friedrich Von Hayek, and made them his own.
This book will provide the reader with an interesting perspective on free market economy and the elusive concept of freedom.
2644103
A terrific analysis of the Great Depression, specifically a quantitative account of stocks, bonds, money flows, currency markets, GDP, GNP, imports, exports, monetary policy, and much more, from 1929 - 1933, taking each year separately. The author also provides a descriptive narrative explaining the course of events to supplement the numerical data.

The truly remarkable aspect of the book is the detail. Mr Wigmore analyses the major asset classes separately, for each year. For instance, you learn that National City bank, in 1929, was trading at 120x P/E, 523% of book value, a 0.69% dividend yield and a 7.1% ROE. You also find out that in 1932 one could have bought IBM for 6x P/E, at 88% of book value, a dividend yield of 11.32% and a 15% ROE. For each class of security, you learn how they fared over the course of those four years 1929 - 1933. Municipal bonds, it turns out, were the preeminent investment, and after adjusting for deflation of 22% actually returned 50% in real terms from 1929 - 1932.

The course of money flows and prices is not looked at in a vacuum and detail is also provided on political and social events. It becomes clear that the Depression was a series of shocks and liquidations of various financial and social causes, leading to a self fulfilling decline. Stock prices, at their bottom in 1932, were on average just 11% of their 1929 highs. An interesting aspect of the book is the study of monetary policy. The author notes that the Federal Reserve pursued open market purchases of securities "which it used to a considerable degree and with appropriate timing". He cites security holdings expanding from $0.4bn in 1929 to $2.2bn in 1933. He also concludes that "the recovery in the economy, prices, and securities prices received little or no impetus from monetary policy."

This is an essential book for a student of the Great Depression.
3718216
Be warned, a lot of the lower star reviews have likely never read the book. The book as some have labelled as "Milton Friedman"-esque is indeed slightly correct. The book is argued from a (now generally accepted) view that the Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression and government prolonged it. However, the book takes a more Austrian view on money and the Fed's role. The U.S. was the last country to come out of the Great Depression; A lot of people forget that the Depression was a global economic downturn. The book is hardly bunk, it's very eye opening. From F.D.R.'s gambling on the gold standard by setting the peg based on a lucky number to the U.S. government essentially stealing the food off of American people's plates (causing the rationing) to hold up prices artificially. The tale of the Great Depression is scary, and unfortunately the economics that lead to the prolonging of the depression are again coming to the forefront of American politics.
1274379
I initially waffled over buying this book, because some of the initial descriptions that I read made it sound as if Blinder wrote as an apologist for Paulson, Geithner and Bernanke.  Then the NYTimes ranked it as one of the top books of 2013 so I bought it anyways.  I am happy to report that this is NOT a cheerleader's account of the actions of the Fed and the Treasury.  Blinder does a great job explaining what happened and why.  He gives criticism where criticism is due, and the trio of Paulson, Geithner, and Bernanke are not spared.  This is not a blow-by-blow account with transcriptions of all the important conversations between policymakers.  For that, look to Lowenstein's "The End of Wall Street".  The reason that I am giving this book four stars instead of five is because while Blinder is a professional economist and is clearly quite perceptive about economic issues and does a masterful job explaining them, he is not a political scientist and his account, especially toward the end of the book, of political issues does not have nearly the same depth or quality as the excellent description of the economic issues.  Overall though, an excellent book that I recommend purchasing, even if the last few chapters should have been cut by the editor.
4005303
Gives insight into the mindset of old money.  Very different from the new found money mindset.
3528911
I've been a fan of Ron Paul since the last election. I had heard about his campaign on the Internet and checked out his first book (The Revolution) and found a lot to support on it. This book is an extension of one of the chapters in his previous book, as well as some of his campaign speeches. The title pretty much says it all, Paul would like to dismantle the Federal Reserve and insert a gold standard (or some other form of "hard" money) in place of it. While this is a fairly radical thesis, the book sets out to prove that it's not so radical in the larger historical perspective; like all ideologies Paul meticulously traces his case through American financial history, showing the battles between "hard" and "fiat" currencies, which cumulated in the unconstitutional creation of the Federal Reserve.

Overall, I think he effectively argues his case and brings up many serious issues relating to the policies around the Federal Reserve. One of the weaknesses of the book is that Paul too quickly brushes aside some of the concerns relating to having a gold standard. Mainly I think he indulges in a utopian fantasy to think people would accept some of the limits of revaluing our currency to a commodity. Just as the economy greatly suffered when Jackson destroyed his bank, similar things would happen if we dismantled the fed. Of course, in light of the present crisis, I'm sure many would say that it would be an acceptable cost for reinstating some economic "sanity". But, it seems a tad bit unrealistic to me--people are simply used to deficit spending and are accustomed to government programs. A gold standard would severely limit these programs and their capacity to care for people. While people can make all the arguments they want, I don't believe that the population in general would accept this.

However, that being said, Ron Paul makes many strong points in his book about the Federal Reserve and its responsibility in the current financial crisis. I think the book is doing a public service in raising awareness to auditing the Fed and many of it's "hidden" practices. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in some of the current financial issues of the day- even if you do not have a strong background in economics.