Lost Science of Money

Book: The Lost Science of Money: The Mythology of Money, the Story of Power by Stephen Zarlenga. American Monetary Institute, 2002. $89

Reviews

• Dr. Michael Hudson: "The history of money is critical to understanding the greatest problem the third millennium will face. Stephen Zarlenga's Lost Science of Money book provides the needed background for seeing the basic structural issues at work.”

• Review by Thomas H. Greco, Jr. at http://www.reinventingmoney.com/documents/ZarlengaReview.pdf

Excerpt:

"Zarlenga's book, is in many ways, impressive, but in other ways, disappointing. This massive treatise (more than 700 pages) recounts the history of money from early times, providing an interesting historical overview based on a wide variety of sources. It is a scholarly, well researched, and insightful account of the evolution of money, banking, and finance, in which the author argues that a main arena of human struggle is over the monetary control of societies.., and shows how the money power has historically rivaled that of governments. All that is well and good; the story of money IS the story of power, and the author tells it well. It is, indeed unfortunate that few people today realize the important political implications that are inherent in the control over money and banking, or that such control has typically been in the hands of elite private interests. This well researched history goes a long way toward clearing away the fog that has enshrouded that bastion of privilege.

The book attempts to do two things, first, to describe the dimensions of the money problem by tracing its roots, not only in economics and finance, but also in ethics, religion, and politics; and second, to prescribe, in broad outline at least, a solution. In the first instance it is mostly successful, but in the second, in my view, it falls far short."