The Creature From Jekyll Island.

In the past I have recommended a few books. My all-time favorite Atlas Shrugged, Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, Lester Thurow's The Zero-Sum Society, and Dr. Thomas Sowell's Applied Economics (2nd edition). I am adding another one. Part mystery, part story, part encyclopedic, G. Edward Griffin's The Creature From Jekyll Island (2nd edition)is now at the top of my recommended reading list. The following excerpt from TCFJI includes a quote and its footnote by Alan Greenspan from before the Creature co-opted him.

GOLD IS THE ENEMY OF THE WELFARE STATE
In more modem times, rulers of nations have become more sophisticated in the methods by which they debase the currency. Instead of clipping coins, it is done through the banking system.
The consequences of that process were summarized in 1966 by Alan Greenspan who, a few years later, would become Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. Greenspan wrote:

The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit....
The law of supply and demand is not to be conned. As the supply of money (of claims) increases relative to the supply of tangible assets in the economy, prices must eventually rise. Thus the earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value in terms of goods. When the economy's books are finally balanced, one finds that this loss in value represents th# goods purchased by the government for welfare or other purposes....
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold.... The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.
This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the "hidden" confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights.

Unfortunately, when Greenspan was appointed as Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, he became silent on the issue of gold. Once he was seated at the control panel which holds the levers of power, he served the statists well as they continued to confiscate the people's wealth through the hidden tax of inflation. Even the wisest of men can be corrupted by power and wealth.

l. Alan Greenspan, "Gold and Economic Freedom," in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, ed. Ayn Rand (New York: Signet Books, 1967), p. 101.

So, Neal Boortz, I don't know if your faint praise is the same for this is the same as the mock faint praise you give Atlas Shrugged to get us to read it, or if you find this a little too "conspiracy theory" for your tastes (I don't), but I find it well documented and believable.

(Mr. Brabson, can this be the 7th grade book report I owe you?)