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