This week in hour 2 we start a new series of readings, from David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 Years. We start the show with ex-financial regulator, William Black, telling his experience of systemic financial fraud in US since the S&L fraud. Then an explanation of fiat money, inflation and central banks by Edward Griffin.
We start the show with 40 minutes of academic and financial regulator, William Black, speaking on the financial fraud and lack of regulation in money markets, from the savings and Loan fraud to more modern ones, which Black estimates represent a theft of around $11,000,000,000,000 from the US taxpayer.
Then we hear from Edward Griffin on issues surrounding fiat money creation, such as central banks, inflation, the use of easy money to create the boom-bust cycle. Central banks, as we shall hear, are basically pseudo-governmental franchises which operate more or less beyond public oversight.
In our second hour, we begin reading David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 Years, an anthropologist's look at the topic of debt and its effects on societies throughout history. In the first chapter, On The Experience of Moral Confusion, Graeber incestigates attitudes towards debt and moneylending throughout he world and throughout recorded history. Why, though money lenders are generally so wealthy and influential in society, are they so widely reviled? Do borrowers have a moral obligation to pay back their loans? What about citizens of a country whose corrupt leader took on a fraudulent debt on their behalf? Such questions are far from simple, and his treatment of them should prove illuminating to a wide audience, from philosophers to economists to anarchists of all stripes.
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