Books
Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered
by E. F. Schumacher
E. F. Schumacher (1911-77) was a trained economist working for the National Coal Board of Britain and had a command of systems economic theory, which is to say conventional institutional and big business economics. But Schumacher offered an alternative to every point of contact with corporate economics, namely, a concept of right livelihood derived from Buddhist thought, nature as spiritual sanctuary rather than material resource, and the priority of ecosystems and the environment as the basis for an economics of simplicity.
Of course, these concepts were not original or exclusive to Schumacher, though he spoke more originally and concisely than most contemporaries. But he was inspired directly by his work with non-government organizations around the world, and by his readings of non-Western economic thought, unusual for the 1970′s. Paul Hawkins, the environmentalist, describes Small is Beautiful as “one of those rare books — a book that can inform a lifetime.” And, indeed, an economics of simplicity takes a life’s dedication.
E. F. Schumacher (1911-1977) was a Rhodes Scholar in economics and the head of planning at the British Coal Board. He was also the president of the Soil Association and the founder of the Intermediate Technology Development Group.
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Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty
by Muhammad Yunus
The remarkable life story of one visionary economist and his simple but revolutionary tool to end world poverty: micro-credit. In 1983, against the advice of banking and government officials, Yunus established Grameen, a bank devoted to providing the poorest of Bangladesh with miniscule loans. Grameen Bank, based on the belief that credit is a basic human right, not the privilege of a fortunate few, now provides over 2.5 billion dollars of micro-loans to more than two million families in rural Bangladesh. Ninety-four percent of Yunus’s clients are women, and repayment rates are near 100 percent. Around the world, micro-lending programs inspired by Grameen are blossoming, with more than three hundred programs established in the United States alone.
Banker to the Poor is Muhammad Yunus’s memoir of how he decided to change his life in order to help the world’s poor. In it he traces the intellectual and spiritual journey that led him to fundamentally rethink the economic relationship between rich and poor, and the challenges he and his colleagues faced in founding Grameen. He also provides wise, hopeful guidance for anyone who would like to join him in “putting homelessness and destitution in a museum so that one day our children will visit it and ask how we could have allowed such a terrible thing to go on for so long.” The definitive history of micro-credit direct from the man that conceived of it, Banker to the Poor is necessary and inspirational reading for anyone interested in economics, public policy, philanthropy, social history, and business.
Muhammad Yunus was born in Bangladesh and earned his Ph.D. in economics in the United States at Vanderbilt University, where he was deeply influenced by the civil rights movement. He still lives in Bangladesh, and travels widely around the world on behalf of Grameen Bank and the concept of micro-credit.
Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System
by Ellen Hodgson Brown
Our money system is not what we have been led to believe. The creation of money has been “privatized,” or taken over by a private money cartel. Except for coins, all of our money is now created as loans advanced by private banking institutions — including the private Federal Reserve. Banks create the principal but not the interest to service their loans. To find the interest, new loans must continually be taken out, expanding the money supply, inflating prices — and robbing you of the value of your money.
Ellen Brown, J.D., developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Brown’s eleven books include the bestselling Nature’s Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, which has sold 285,000 copies.
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Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
by John Perkins
“Economic hit men,” John Perkins writes, “are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder.”
John Perkins should know—he was an economic hit man. His job was to convince countries that are strategically important to the U.S.—from Indonesia to Panama—to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development, and to make sure that the lucrativeprojects were contracted to U. S. corporations. Saddled with huge debts, these countries came under the control of the United States government, World Bank and other U.S.-dominated aid agencies that acted like loan sharks—dictating repayment terms and bullying foreign governments into submission.
This extraordinary real-life tale exposes international intrigue, corruption, and little-known government and corporate activities that have dire consequences for American democracy and the world.
John Perkins is founder and president of the Dream Change Coalition, which works closely with Amazonian and other indigenous people to help preserve their environments and cultures. From 1971 to 1981 he worked for the international consulting firm of Chas.T. Main, where he became chief economist and director of economics and regional planning. Perkins has lectured and taught at universities and learning centers on four continents and is a regular lecturer for the Omega Center.
The Creature From Jekyll Island: A Second Look At the Federal Reserve
by G. Edward Griffin
Where does money come from? Where does it go? Who makes it? The money magicians’ secrets are unveiled. We get a close look at their mirrors and smoke machines, their pulleys, cogs, and wheels that create the grand illusion called money.
A dry and boring subject? Just wait! You’ll be hooked in five minutes. Reads like a detective story — which it really is. But it’s all true. This book is about the most blatant scam of all history. It’s all here: the cause of wars, boom-bust cycles, inflation, depression, prosperity. Creature from Jekyll Island will change the way you view the world, politics, and money. Your world view will definitely change. You’ll never trust a politician again — or a banker.
G. Edward Griffin is a writer and documentary film producer with many successful titles to his credit. Listed in Who’s Who in America, he is well known because of his unique talent for researching difficult topics and presenting them in clear terms that all can understand. He has dealt with such diversified subjects as archaeology and ancient earth history, international banking, internal subversion, terrorism, the history of taxation, U.S. foreign policy, the science and politics of cancer therapy, the Supreme Court, and the United Nations. Some of his better known works include The Discovery of Noah’s Ark, Moles in High Places, The Open Gates of Troy, No Place to Hide, World Without Cancer, The Life and Words of Robert Welch, The Capitalist Conspiracy, The Grand Design, The Great Prison Break, and The Fearful Master. His most recent book is entitled The Creature From Jekyll Island: A Second Look At The Federal Reserve.
A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order
by F. William Engdahl
This book is a gripping account of the murky world of the international oil industry and its role in world politics. Scandals about oil are familiar to most of us. From George W. Bush’s election victory to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, US politics and oil enjoy a controversially close relationship. The US economy relies upon the cheap and unlimited supply of this single fuel. William Engdahl takes the reader through a history of the oil industry’s grip on the world economy. His revelations are startling. Moving from the post-World War I.
William Engdahl has written on issues of energy, politics and economics for more than 30 years, beginning the first oil shock in the early 1970′s. After a degree in politics from Princeton University and graduate study in comparative economics at the University of Stockholm, he worked as a free-lance writer in New York and later in Europe, covering subjects including IMF policy in the former Soviet Union, Third World debt issues, hedge funds and the Asia crisis. Mr. Engdahl has contributed regularly to a number of publications including Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine; Grant’sInvestor.com, European Banker and Business Banker International. He has spoken at numerous international conferences on geopolitical, economic and energy subjects, from London to Jakarta to Moscow. He currently lives in Germany and in addition to writing regularly on issues of economics, energy and international affairs.
The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry–and What We Must Do to Stop It
by Antonia Juhasz
In this thorough, readable takedown of Big Oil, the most profitable industry in the world, Juhasz the author of The Bush Agenda exposes the ways in which a half dozen oil companies have achieved control over American families and U.S. politics, triggering environmental and humanitarian catastrophes they have no intention of resolving. Within 10 years of Standard Oil’s founding in 1870, John D. Rockefeller monopolized the refining, marketing and output of U.S. oil; ever since 1890′s Sherman Antitrust Act split the company into small constituent parts, oil players have scrambled to evade regulation, regather into ever-larger corporations and regain the ability to set prices and control output. Debunking industry claims over recent oil price escalation, Juhasz exposes how Big Oil has used techniques like speculative futures markets and the “Enron Loophole”–along with massive operations opacity–to reap record profits year after year while growing their political influence; indeed, Juhasz locates the current “oiligarchy” making “the most pressing decisions of our time” from inside George W. Bush’s White House, crafting policy and advocating war. Calling for a “Separation of Oil and State,” this excellent, wide-ranging study of disastrous monopoly capitalism should shake up notions that major energy players are interested in any alternative to more oil, money and power.
Antonia Juhasz is a leading oil industry, international trade, and finance policy expert and the author of The Bush Agenda. A fellow with Oil Change International and the Institute for Policy Studies, she has served as an aide to two members of Congress and holds a master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University. Juhasz is an award-winning writer and frequent media commentator and her work has been featured in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and Petroleum Review Magazine, as well as Alternet.org. She has appeared on Kudlow & Company, National Public Radio’s Diane Rehm Show and Marketplace, Washington Journal, Hannity & Colmes, and Democracy Now!, among many other shows. She lives in San Francisco, California.
The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group
By Dan Briody.
The Carlyle Group is an investment consortium of international financiers and top level political figures who use their influence to obtain highly profitable U.S. government contracts. Their affiliated companies specialize in war production but also include construction projects for rebuilding from the aftermath of war. Profit in, profit out. This book traces the unsavory history of this group and shows yet one more reason that the Bush Administration – which has close ties to Carlyle investors such as George H.W. Bush, James Baker, Donald Rumsfeld, Frank Carlucci, Paul Wolfowitz, and even King Fahd, king of Saudi Arabia – pursues a war policy that is not wanted by the American people but highly profitable to the Carlyle Group.
Dan Briody is an award-winning business journalist who has written for Forbes, Wired, Red Herring, and the Industry Standard. Briody is credited with breaking the story on the Carlyle Group. Since Red Herring published his article “Carlyle’s Way,” Briody has appeared on numerous radio and television programs to discuss the Carlyle Group and has become a primary source for other journalists covering this story.
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The Coming Battle by M.W. Walbert (1899)
The lost book about America’s banking system First published in 1899, back in print in 1997 for the first time in 100 years! Using congressional records and news stories from the period, we get a front-row view of how (and why) our money is manipulated, why we have economic recessions, and why silver was abandoned as a backing for money.
A true history of our national debt.” Reprint of the 1899 edition. A complete history of the National Banking Money Power in the United States from 1776 to 1899. Read how recessions, depressions and panics are created at will; how money took control of the influential colleges and universities; foreclosure of farms; labor riots; usurping of sovereign rights and more.
In this volume the author endeavors to give an accurate history of the present National Bank System of currency, including an account of the first United States Bank,- both of which were borrowed from Great Britain by those statesmen who, like the father of Sir Robert Peel, believed that a national debt was the source of prosperity. It is believed that the facts adduced in the following pages will be productive of some good, in pointing out the immense evils lurking in that system of banking, a system which has produced panics at will, and which is the active abettor of the stock gamblers, railroad wreckers, and those industrial tyrants of modern times, the enormously overcapitalized and oppressive trusts.
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