Title: The Case Against the Fed
Author: Murray N. Rothbard
Genre: History, Economics
Published: 1994
Format: Paperback
Pages: 151

The Federal Reserve System in the United States dominates modern economic life more than anything else.  Aren’t most of all assets measured in Federal Reserve dollars?  Aren’t virtually all transactions completed with Federal Reserve dollars?  Your salary?  It pays for all the wars.  Why do they have this monopoly?   The Federal Reserve is based on an ongoing fraud and was from the very beginning as expertly laid out here by the prolific author, scholar, economist, and historian Murray Rothbard. 

This book is important because this counterfeiting monopoly is largely unrecognized by the general public.  In part due to “it has always been this way” ignorance, lack of economics understanding, and defense by the state sponsored intellectuals.  It is of the bankers, for the bankers, and by the bankers.

Rothbard starts the book by explaining the basics of banking in laymen terms.  Most importantly highlighting what is legalized counterfeiting and monetary inflation.  He touches on the boom and bust cycle caused by credit expansion.  The back of the napkin explanation of the Austrian Business Cycle if you will.  Read Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State for in depth coverage of business cycles.

The real fun and meaty part of this book is Rothbard’s tracing the history of how there came to be a Federal Reserve System (Central Bank) in the United States.  This is a fascinating story of deception and power; politicians, bankers, intellectuals; people famous to this day and people long forgotten.  Well known names like Morgan, Rockefeller, T. Roosevelt, McKinley, Warburg, and Loeb.  Rothbard weaves the stories of how the big bankers and their political friends cartelized banking through the Federal Reserve System.  Most interesting are the sections titled “Putting Cartelization Across: The Progressive Line”, “Putting a Central Bank Across: Manipulating a Movement 1897-1902”, “The Central Bank Movement Revives 1906-1910”, and “Culmination at Jekyll Island”.

One of many interesting tidbits is President Teddy Roosevelt, a Morgan man, pushing through the Sherman Anti-Trust, that was dead in the water, to punish rival Rockefeller’s Standard Oil.

All who take the Federal Reserve and central banking as normal and necessary must read this book.  This is the biggest swindle in U.S. history.

Yours in Liberty, Thomas Freese

Title: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
An American Slave
Author: Frederick Douglass
Genre: History, Autobiography
Published: 1845
Format: E-Book
Pages: 140

A dramatic autobiography and powerful firsthand account of slavery, written with pathos, wit, fluency of language, and strength of reasoning by America’s most famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass.  This is the first of his three autobiographies.

This book is important because it is a firsthand original source document, unfiltered by a modern historian or written from a modern moral point of view.   There is also some economic insight, though probably unintended by Douglass.

This book includes two prefaces by American Anti-Slavery Society abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, Esq.  Garrison gives a glowing testimony of Douglass, calling him “an ornament of society and a blessing to his race”.

Douglass was born in 1817 or 1818 in Maryland to a white father and a slave mother darker than Frederick.  The bulk of the narrative is Douglass’ observations of his life as a slave from boyhood until his escape to New York as a young man in 1838. He walks the reader through each of his masters by name and circumstance.  Describing the everyday horrors inflicted on the slaves as well as the strength and courage needed to survive.  Also sharing the relative hopes like being assigned to the great house as opposed to the fields, not being shipped to the deep south where conditions were thought to be much harsher, or being leased to a master in the city.  It is was also interesting the hierarchy of respect among slaves that to be a poor man’s slave was doubly disgraceful.

At 7- or 8-years old Douglass was filled with joy when he left the plantation for Baltimore.  It was here he received instruction in the alphabet.  Then his first books and teaching himself to read.  He read the classic “The Columbian Orator” every chance he got.  He found from Sheridan’s 84 selections speeches in behalf of Catholic emancipation a bold denunciation of slavery and a powerful vindication of human rights.  The more Douglass read, the more he detested his en-slavers.  His knowledge came to torment his soul.  Sometimes he envied his fellow slaves for their stupidity.

Throughout the narrative Douglass references god and Christianity.  He describes the “Christian” religion of the south as a mere covering of horrid crimes.  Pointing out their hypocrisy.  In fact, due to so much criticism of their religion in the narrative Douglass adds an appendix to make clear he loves the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ.

Douglass is careful not to publicize the details of his escape.  This may jeopardize others escaping or their helpers.  He does not approve of the public manner of some of his western friends conducting the Underground Railroad.  He refers to it as the Upper Ground Railroad.  He also was of the opinion that thousands more would escape if it were not for the strong binds to family and friends.

Economic observations.  As slave it appeared to him that all non-slave owners were desperately poor.  When he was leased out to a Baltimore family he sometimes shared food with his poor white, kid friends.  Later when he was free in Massachusetts he saw much more prosperity for everybody.  Even the poorest people had as much as the small slave holders.  Prior to his escape in Baltimore Douglass learned the trade of a ship caulker.  He was able to command the highest wages given to the most experienced caulkers.  He paid $6 to $9 a week to his master.  He kept the rest of his $1.50 a day wage.

Read this book for its history, its eloquence, its honesty.  Very few people write this well today.  But know you will find many passages disturbing.  Quoting Garrison upon hearing Douglass for the first time declared “that Patrick Henry never made a speech more eloquent in the cause of liberty”.

Title: Procrastination Annihilation 
A Happy Ending to a Human Tragedy 

Author: Antony Sammeroff 

Genre: Self-Help

Published: 2018  

Format: E-Book 

Pages: 75

This free e-book from Antony Sammeroff is designed to both analyze the typical root causes of procrastination and to provide you an actionable plan to overcome your procrastination habits.  He shares a lot of his own journey of battling procrastination for 30 years.   After experimenting with dead end methods to change his work ethic he finally came up with this three-month course of action, so you can do as he has done.

The theme of his solutions is based his analysis of the root causes of procrastination.  He calls this the 5 dragons between you and your goals.  These are:

1. All or Nothing Thinking
2. Perfectionism
3. Fatalism
4. Seeing Things as Things to be Done Rather Than Things to Do
5. I Don’t Feel Like it. Ever!

He breaks these down with many examples that are obvious once your read them.

Having identified these root causes he offers pragmatic step by step solutions to move past these instincts to accomplish your goals.  He advocates a series of bite size steps towards procrastination annihilation, taking credit for small victories on your path.  “Mile by mile – life’s a trial, inch by inch – life’s a cinch!”  He spends a lot text describing your emotions and how they contribute to your procrastination habits.  He also points out the importance of your physical state to your energy levels, offering what he did to improve his.   He gives examples of his personnel development clients dealing with their own procrastination issues and their successes against them.

Antony’s book has provided me with actionable steps to minimize my procrastination and accomplish things every day that add up to meeting goals I would otherwise put off until I was in the mood to do it in a big burst of effort.  Sort of like cramming for a test the night before.

Much like How to Win Friends and Influence People this is a book that you might want to reread every few years to sharpen your saw.

“Be yourself and love it.”

Title: S.B. Fuller 
Pioneer in Black Economic Development 

Author: Mary Fuller Casey 

Genre: Biography 

Published: 2003 

Format: Paperback 

Pages: 200

This is a biography of the great entrepreneur S.B. Fuller.  Written by his daughter Mary Fuller Casey with a large epilogue of tributes from men and women who benefited from the acts and teachings of S.B.  From 1905-1988 S.B. Fuller was not just a dynamic and successful businessman.  During this time, he greatly influenced, trained, or aided legions of other blacks to start, build, and grow successful businesses or organizations of their own.

This book is important because Mr. Fuller is not well known in black American history and he should be.  He is worth idolizing.  But like Booker T. Washington he sometimes clashed with the civil rights movement that advocated political solutions whereas Mr. Fuller advocated self-help solutions.  He eschewed victimhood.  He called that “masterism”.  The problem with political solutions is that they depend on politicians that have more incentive that problems remain.  They derive power from this.  Not to mention most of these politicians are white.

The book covers the entire life of S.B. Fuller.  From his childhood in the Fuller cabin in the swamps of Ouachita Parish, Louisiana to Chicago, Illinois where he owned many buildings and a business striving for the $100 million dollars in sales.

The remarkable stories I want to share are:

1. S.B. was one of 7 children by the time the family moved to Memphis. When his mother Ethel was dying upon having an eighth child die at birth, she made S.B. promise to keep the family together.  S.B. was the oldest at 17.  She correctly predicted his father would leave upon her death.  S.B. kept his promise.  He declined offers of relatives to take some kids because it would break up the family.  He declined welfare from the “welfare people” that came around because of the shame he felt if people didn’t think they could make it on their own.
2. In 1928 S.B. left Memphis for Chicago on foot and with no money! He prayed to God that he could get their sooner then walking.  Along came a young white man that offered S.B. a lift if S.B. agreed to do the driving.
3. In 1934 S.B. refinanced his car and received a $25 rebate. With this as his venture capital he rented a room in a Chicago building for $4 a week and started Fuller’s Quality Soap.  Soon he was selling soap so fast his partner, and wife, Lestine could not keep up in converting the bulk bought soap into Fuller labeled soap.
4. In follow up to the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama Dr. Martin Luther King was in Chicago when S.B. Fuller met with him. Fuller suggested “Blacks should buy the bus line, mostly blacks ride it and they are not riding now.  The bus company is losing money is willing to sell.  We should buy it.”  But Dr. King had a different agenda.  So S.B. went to Alabama to try to get support for the idea.  But he “couldn’t get the cooperation needed to make it happen, any more than W.E.B DuBois was able to, when he said, “Don’t worry about the Jim Crow cars, buy the railroad line.”   S.B. then said “Dr. Martin Luther King thinks civil rights legislation is going to solve the black man’s dilemma, but I know better.”
5. In 1963, U.S. News and World Report carried a four-page exclusive interview with S.B. Fuller. Titled “A Negro Business Man Speaks His Mind”, this pro-capitalism in American promotion of blacks building their own businesses caused quite a stir in the black community.  Unfortunately, too many in the civil rights community saw it as downplaying racial barriers.  Jackie Robinson even promoted a boycott of Fuller products.   Sad that they didn’t embrace Mr. Fuller as another champion of black betterment just with a different tactic then their own.  But plenty of black leaders who understood Mr. Fuller’s work did stand up for him.   Fuller’s response to the criticism was “I don’t blame them; they don’t understand”.  I as a libertarian can relate to this thought.

The Epilogue contains glowing tributes from such notable people as: George E. Johnson, founder of Johnson Products Company.  The first black company listed on the American Stock Exchange.  John H. Johnson (unrelated), founder of Johnson Publishing, publisher of Ebony, Jet, and many leading black oriented magazines.  Joe L. Dudley, Sr. founder and CEO of Dudley Products Company and Dudley Cosmetology University.  Rose Morgan successful owner/operator of Morgan Houses of Beauty and Morgan Fashion Tours.  The list is a long one.  All helped getting their starts in business by Mr. Fuller.

The book contains a large number of classic photographs from the 1940’s to 1980’s of Fuller Company facilities, grand ballroom business conventions, award ceremonies, employees, and famous people interacting with Mr. Fuller like President Eisenhower, Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich author),  and John H. Johnson.

I love this book because it shows in great detail an example of how capitalism is the best engine of prosperity for blacks in American.  In spite of real and imagined barriers.  S.B. Fuller saw this and made the most of it.  Bringing as many people along with him as chose to follow in his footsteps.  This especially important to me because my grandchildren are black.  I hope they don’t embrace victimhood like too many around them in Detroit do.  But instead become self-directed entrepreneurs.

Title: How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America

Author: Brion McClanahan

Genre: History

Published: 2017

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 189

This book traces the huge federal government we have today to the nationalist ideas of Alexander Hamilton.  These were further cemented into practice through the other three primary subjects of this book – Supreme Court justices John Marshall, Joseph Story, and Hugo Black.

The thesis of this book is important because it explains the roots of the leviathan the federal government of the United Status has become.  How federalism has been all but destroyed.  That the problem is not the current president.  Or the last president.   It shows the intellectual foundations of a nationalist government built on debt and centralized power.   How the U.S. Constitution has been turned on it’s head by the idea of implied powers.  Most famously argued by Hamilton among the founding generation and codified by Chief Justice John Marshall who presided for 35 years.  Marshall was an outgoing John Adams appointed him as a political move against the Jeffersonians.

This book starts each of the first two characters pointing out their hypocrisies with cleverly titled chapters Hamilton vs. Hamilton and Marshall vs. Marshall.  Both having argued for the federal nature and granting of limited and specifically enumerated powers of the constitution during the ratification stage.  Yet later after ratification inventing the idea of implied powers and extending the supremacy clause over the status such that would become mere incorporations of the national government.  Hamilton had revealed his colors at the constitutional convention in 1787 but was rebuffed for ideas like electing a king for life and making the states incorporations of the national governments.

Evidence today that the Hamilton nationalist ideas have won over the Jeffersonian idea of republican federalism are everywhere.   John Marshall decisions are still used by the courts to grant the federal government carte blanche.  Joseph Story’s writings on the constitution are famously taught to all American law students to this day.  Despite Story inventing a founding history that was flat out false.  Claiming somehow the union predates the states when the states had existed for decades before, signed 13 separate peace treaties in Paris with the British, and ratified the constitution as a strict list of enumerated powers granted to the national government.

Justice Black, the last known Klan member nominated to the Supreme Court, took these ideas further granting “rights” from the national government such as abortion to further cement the top down approach of the United States today.

I have not read any other books directly about Hamilton.   However, the conclusions are consistent with what I read from other historians I trust such as Tom Woods and Kevin Gutzman.   The author McClanahan makes his point that the ideas of Hamilton have screwed up American by making us just another top down governed nation instead of the federal republic of decentralization and emphasis on local control.

I certainly was not taught much in my school days about Hamilton other than he was the first Secretary of State, was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr, and is on the $20 bill.  There are many details I was unaware of that are fascinating.  The founding generation had much of political battles and deception that we are led to believe are just a modern thing.   If you’re fascinated by behind the scenes history this book is for you.,

Yours in liberty, Thomas Freese 2018

Title: The Middle of the Road Leads to Socialism

Author: Ludwig Von Mises

Genre: Free Markets

Published: 2018; Original 1950

Format: Paperback of a Speech 

Pages: 18

This is a speech delivered by Mises to the University Club in New York in 1950.  It is a concise example of Mises economic logic showing how interventionism in just one sector of the economy causes labor and capital to flow to other less regulated sectors of the economy.  Thus, more of the economy is impacted than the government regulators intended and their intended effect is not reached.  So, the regulators then intervene again.   This “middle of the road” process leads to socialism.  A free market and an interventionism market are mutually exclusive.   Mises gives many examples, primarily the price controls of Germany under Hitler and Britain under Churchill and Atlee.  Both ending up in a socialist economy.  Mises also provides some intellectual history of socialist thought, most notably by Marx and Engels.

This is a quick read.  I read it at a basketball tournament between games.  If you’re new to Mises this is a good place to start.  Human Action, which I have yet to read myself, is an intimidating project for the laymen.

Yours in Liberty, Tom Freese

Title: I, Pencil

Author: Leonard E. Read

Genre: Free Markets

Published: 2006; Original 1958

Format: eBook; 41 pages

This is the family tree story of a pencil as told by the pencil.  Well at least from the point of view of an ordinary wood and lead pencil.  Actually it is a lesson in economics.  Specifically the wonders of the free market.  The invisible hand in Adam Smith’s Wealth Of Nations.  It demonstrates how the price system coordinates labor of all kinds and in all parts of the world.  This is spontaneous order.  There was no top down government plan to make pencils.  Yet we have millions of the inexpensive, reliable pencils year after year.  No single person on earth knows how to make a pencil from the earth’s raw materials.  This story demonstrates how the division of labor leads to great prosperity for the masses.

The pencil starts with a supply chain of cedar trees from Oregon, the heavy equipment involved which required such things as mining and smelting.   Then off to a mill in California on rail cars.  The pencil reminds us of all the capital equipment involved in each task.  And of the skilled labor.  Don’t forget the power.  Other supply chains start or go through Mississippi, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Mexico, Brazil, Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), and oil fields.  Very few of these diverse, skilled people know of each other.

Through the point of view of the pencil is a testimony of what men and women can accomplish when free to try.  The lesson from this book is to leave creative energies uninhibited.

This is a classic and innovative economics book written for non-economists.  There is no math, LOL.  It’s very appropriate for teenagers on up.  I read it on my lunch hour in 2015.  I had also read it years ago.  When four of my grand kids visited me in 2015 we took turns reading it to each other.  It’s inexpensive.  Get your copy from http://www.fee.org now.

Yours in Liberty, Thomas Freese

Paperback Cover

Title: 33 Questions About American History - You're Not Supposed To Ask

Author: Thomas E. Woods 
(www.tomwoods.com)

Genre: History

Published: 2007

Format: Paperback; 260 pages

This is a collection of 33 short, independent history lessons focused on very significant facts that mainstream media and academia either ignore or misrepresent.  The chapters can be read in any order.  They are not chronologically ordered.

Each chapter it titled by the question raised based on the conventional wisdom about that topic.  But the chapter then proceeds to document why the conventional wisdom is a myth.

If you have any curiosity about American history, you will love this book.  You will have trouble putting it down.  It is concisely written.  It has a large bibliography of notes for each chapter if you wish to cross check the facts.

I love all the chapters.  But two of my favorites are:

#6: Was the “Wild West” really so wild? – You’ll find out of course the opposite is true.  Crime was actually quite low.  Murders were rare.  You were much safer from violence than in today’s major cities.  You’ll learn about wagon-train government, which was new to me.  “Even in the absence of government, the old West was far less violent than most American cities today.  Frontiersman developed private mechanisms to enforce the law and define and enforce property rights.”

#32: Who was S. B. Fuller? – Without Google do you know who S. B. Fuller was?  I didn’t.  Yet he became reportedly the wealthiest black man in America.  He was born into poverty in Louisiana in 1905.  His single mom of 7 children dies when he was 17.  They refused the “relief people” because that was considered shameful at that time.  He started with $25 in depression era 1935 and made it into a huge, successful cosmetic company.   Eventually owning or controlling 8 corporations.  Yet when he publicly advocated blacks embrace the capitalist system as business owners as being the best way to liberate and empower black people instead of political activism, he was shunned.  He was accused of blaming the victim by establishment civil rights organizations.  He was very much the next generation Booker T. Washington.  Why is Fuller ignored by historians?  Why is he not a black entrepreneurial icon?

There are 31 other historical myths exposed in the other chapters.  Where the American Indians really environmentalists?  Did FDR’s new deal lift America out of the great depression?  What was the biggest unknown scandal of the Clinton presidency?   Who is most responsible for the imperial presidency we have today?   Did capitalism cause the great depression?  Did Hoover sit back and do nothing during the great depression?  How anti-war have American liberals actually been over the years?

If you love history, suspect that you have been lied to in school or by the media, or even are curious about history, read this book.  You will have trouble putting it down.

Yours in liberty, Thomas Freese

Paperback Cover

Title: Up From Slavery

Author: Booker T. Washington (1856 - 1915)

Genre: Autobiography

Originally published: 1901; Copy read published: 1995

Format: Paperback; 157 pages

This the life story of a remarkable American born a slave and his amazingly focused journey from extreme poverty to president of the Tuskegee Institute.  This was a man that recognized his calling in life and pursued it 24/7, year after year.  He helped thousands along the way, especially young blacks hungry for a better life.  He and they saw education as the path to this better life.  He grew Tuskegee from a stable and a hen house to 40 buildings valued at $500,000 (over $12 million in 2015 dollars) with no debt by 1898.  In addition to their studies, the students built 36 of these buildings and grew their own food on the school farms.  They made the bricks from scratch!  His hard work did not go unnoticed.  He become the most influential spokesman for black Americans in his day.  Frederick Douglass at died in 1895.  His story includes slices of history such as the reconstruction period, 1890’s America, letters from presidents Cleveland and McKinley, and even a little European insight when his friends insisted on, and paid for, his first vacation ever.  A trip to travel Europe with his wife.  He secured a visit to Tuskegee from president McKinley in 1898.  Washington was a prime speaker at the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895 at what is now Piedmont Park, receiving nationwide praise.  He had been asked to represent the “Negro race”.  You can also benefit from his stories of countless fundraising and public speaking.  They are virtually a tutorial to be learned from.  All in all this is an inspirational story.  As you read it you may think to yourself why haven’t done more with my life given all the hard work, overcoming hurdles, and ultimate accomplishment of Mr. Washington.  I highly recommend you read this book.  Then a few years later, read it again.  Share it with your children.

Yours in liberty, Thomas Freese