Money Matters: TOP follow-up

Did you attend Top of Ohio Patriot's event last week – an informative presentation, titled Money Matters? We hope so!

As promised, here's the recommended reading list that was included in the presentation:

We think that educating ourselves about "how our money system works"is one of the most important things we can do as citizens. So, we hope the above books can serve as a starting point for anyone who's interested.

Speaking of money matters . . .

Coincidentally, on the day before our event (on June 22), economist and infamous former Chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, died at the age of 100.

It's pretty easy to recognize that Greenspan was a consequential character who affected the course of U.S. history.

Shakespeare put it this way: "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones."

Although Greenspan certainly left a lot of evil in his wake, he wasn't always a "bad guy" when it came to economics and monetary policy. Some might remember that he spent time early in his career as an Ayn Rand acolyte. In fact, he penned three chapters of Rand's book, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (see the recommended reading list above), which defended the notion that 100% gold-based money is necessary for economic freedom.

Had Greenspan wished to run the Federal Reserve in such a way as to approximate a gold standard as much as possible, he probably could have done so. But sadly, he did not. Instead he used his position for continued central-bank-oriented scheming, and the results were (obviously) disastrous.

Greenspan's contempt for the public was legendary. He once confessed to Lesley Stahl of CBS News that before Congressional Committees he would intentionally speak in a special gibberish that he called "syntax destruction" to confuse Congress (and the public) about the Fed's destructive intentions and actions.

It may be that Greenspan actually died back in the 1970s rather than a few days ago, when he got pulled away from sound money sensibility and into the dark-sided Fed machinery. Perhaps what lingered on in bodily form to the age of 100 was merely a ghostly wrecking ball. One can't help but wonder how that happened. Why did he drink the Kool-Aid?

– TOP