The Art and Science of American Money

The Art and Science of American Money -How our Money is created and why it matters by Chuck Morse Kindle Price: $5.99

This book is based upon the monetary theories of the now obscure late 19^th Century economist Alexander Del Mar, the author of “The Science of Money.”

Del Mar defined money in three ways, as an abstract means of saving and storing value, as a measurement of the worth of things, and as a means of exchange.

Utilizing this thesis, author and syndicated radio commentator Charles Moscowitz examines the history of money and currencies with a particular emphasis on the story of American currency from Colonial times to the present.

Through this analysis, Moscowitz compares the various and at times intense struggle through American history between the school of thought, first articulated by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, which held that currency, in order to find its true expression as described later by Del Mar, should be created and issued directly by the U.S. Government interest free. 

This view was countered by Alexander Hamilton who played a pivotal role in the establishment of the First Bank of the United States, a private banking institution that was granted a virtual monopoly to issue, at interest, the American currency.

Thus the argument was between public debt-free money, issued by the U.S.Treasury, and reflecting economic production and national values, and the debt note loaned to the government. Other champions of the debt free U. S. Note include Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy.

Moscowitz observes that American money has been a debt instrument since the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913, which he refers to as a private cartel of banks and investors both domestic and foreign. 

Whenever our government needs money, Moscowitz notes, rather than simply creating our money through the Treasury, the Congress borrows our money from the private bankers and investors at the Federal Reserve Bank at interest. This, Moscowitz notes, is why we have a national debt and this is why we as citizens are up to our eyeballs in personal debt.

Our Money has been inflated ten times over in the last half century. Moscowitz points to periods of American history where capital accumulation was at such a rapid rate that individuals and businesses were virtually debt free and were able to grow by means of investing their own profits as opposed to having to borrow, at interest, to the banks.

This book offers suggestion in terms of how to get out of the economic mess were are in today. Ideas are presented in this book that would lead to a debt-free currency, one that reflects the value of American production and one in which private bankers are not skimming off the top. 

Such a form of currency, Moscowitz notes, would be to the benefit of everyone at all levels of the economic spectrum as such a system would lead to genuine individual and national prosperity and sovereignty.