Thomas H. Greco is a different sort of writer who has developed a significant following at the popular level of utopian economic literacy. One reason he is being reviewed here is based upon his long term advocacy of a particular approach to community currencies which he interprets as equal to advocacy for monetary reform. His first book was possibly the worst non-fiction book I had ever read up to that point. Reviewing his published books is rather easy, because though they have different titles they are generally on the same agenda, have some successive textual improvements over prior versions, and have been updated relative to related intervening events. They all seem to boil down to the same basic table of contents. His most recent edition is The End of Money and the End of Civilization published by Chelsea Green Publishing on June 4, 2009. He is already getting rave reviews, by people apparently deeply impressed by his ideology, if not his thorough knowledge. Fortunately for this review he has posted a short paper at his website on the topic of "monetary reform." The title of this article is "The Need for Monetary Reform and the Status of the Movement," and it can be found at http://www.reinventingmoney.com/library.html . The reader needs to very clearly understand that Greco is a dedicated libertarian, who develops no doubts from the inconsistencies or the lack of basis for his rhetoric and "reasoning."

First a small digression covering the logics of rhetoric and science. Induction and deduction are fairly well defined and widely accepted. There are also reduction and conflation, which are often made to appear to be very much like induction and deduction, but are often only noticed in more critical examinations. Reduction is the attempted validation of a conclusion by a collection of actually unrelated details as factoids which are either unverified or unable to be verified. Reduction can also be accomplished by selectively citing related facts which bear on the argued conclusion and ignoring all pertinent facts which would invalidate the desired conclusion. Conflation is the supposed validation of desired conclusions by their association with popular values and truisms. Conflation also works through the villianization of people and institutions. In the context of Greco's argumentation against all "statism," the problem with the institutions of governance has been that often people are either elected or appointed into positions in government who do not believe in the validity of governance except as a means to private gain. This argument doesn't not nullify the principle of or the need for governance.

Several of the popular writers on monetary matters are more invested more in persuasion than in legitimate reasoning. An important piece to understand about reduction and conflation is that they tend to be constructed by starting out from a targeted conclusion, in other words the reasoning is backwards. This may be acceptable in a debate where the outcome doesn't matter very much. If a person is not sensitive to these devices, then the reader can be easily led astray or flattered into agreeing with an agenda which is dangerous.

At the top of the first page even before he defines his problem he asks " What is Needed to Solve the Problem?" His answer is "The de-nationalization of money, the separation of money and state is urgently needed." There is a peculiar convenience in defining solutions before the problems are described. This is also very strange in that the prevailing definition of money among those who have studied these issues, excepting the self referential nature of libertarians, is that money is that which is used to pay taxes as is established by the state as the collection of institutions of sovereignty, governance, and public services. In effect Greco is tossing overboard the opinions of the best monetary economists available, simply on his assertion. To be critical of how a particular institution operates, does not validate eliminating all institutions of governance. If Greco was ever interested, the problems originating with the current monetary conventions are directly related to the privatization of those institutions and that influence upon the related regulatory agencies.

Apart from the reliance upon specie, precious metal units of money, the first Bretton Woods accord in 1947 was the first international effort toward a world reserve currency, at that time designated as the US Dollar. When the gold that had been backing the US Dollar ran out in 1970, President Nixon declared the fiat value for the Dollar, based on little more than the threat of military violence or global economic chaos. In 1973 through a military agreement to protect the Saud royal family of Saudi Arabia, then the chair of O.P.E.C., to have oil sales be denominated in US Dollars. This is the only modern example of a denationalized currency. Historical examples are the the coins of Imperial Rome which were used throughout its empire in a similar way. The petroleum based US Dollar was likewise leveraged with US military influence as a form of neo-colonialism. That the US during that period was a largest single market also aided the acceptance of the US Dollar as the world reserve currency. That period is now ending. There have been suggestions that an international currency be established as a stateless money but there is no basis for this to happen and be accepted on a worldwide basis. The present leading currency and economy is the People's Republic of China, and the PRC has suggested that a basket of leading currencies be used.

Greco's advocacy for the de-nationalization money is summed up "Don't expect the politicians to do the right thing. The good news is that the answers can come from free people exercising their rights of contract and association." Apart from the cynicism of this statement, it again ignores the modern definition money as being accepted as legal tender and in the payment of taxes. Further, it is through the function of the judiciary that contracts can be enforced as the rule of law. The difficulties with the management of the state has been through the corruption of the leadership through the privatization of the sovereign right to issue currency and money. The reason that this is the case is that regulations and controls upon these banking corporations have been reduced or captured due the political influence of free market economics and the corruption of US law in the declaration of corporations as legal individuals. So I have to wonder here whether Greco is off puffing up a utopia that doesn't exist, or if the "people" he is referring to are actually corporations.

Greco then defines "the main problems" as the "legal tender status for FED-created money, the monopolization of credit by the banking cartel, and the lack of an objective, non-political unit of money." To address these "main problems" in reverse order, it is not clear that "an objective, non political unit of money" is either possible or wise without having some commodity that is universally available, with approximately similar valuation across the planet, or some unit of governance being responsible for its creditworthiness. Lacking any effort to define this utility, perhaps Greco's fiction plays well as a bedtime story. Gold and silver didn't work very well for various reasons, and somehow even uranium seems like a poor choice. Eliminating "the monopolization of the issuance of credit by the banking cartel" sounds ok in isolation, but if you add in the fiction of an objective, non-political unit of money it seems that the intent is to have this power available to one and all. Adding in the first main problem of the legal tender status of Fed created money, then it would seem that the intention is for a non-political, objective form of legal tender status to be available to all free people, and perhaps thereby corporations. By this approach the declared problems cannot be resolved. Eliminating this private monopoly by banking corporations and returning that sovereign power to the government as a public monopoly is a different way to solve Greco's "problems" and a alternative which he fails to even consider.

In the early 19th century US President Andrew Jackson was strongly opposed to the criminality and usury of the Second Bank of the United States. After he removed the Federal government's deposits from it and then allowed its charter to expire what he left in its place was a variety of radical state's rights and a free market free for all. In effect it was the right decision with a very bad choice of an alternative, even if by default. During the free banking period the US had its highest level of banking defaults and frauds, except perhaps upto just recently. What the two periods have in common is the extremist application of free market economics, largely absent of any effective regulation. There is no real life application to validate advocating for a ideological form of economics particularly of the pseudo-libertarian variety. There would be no equality of liberty among citizens until they all had equal access, to resources and opportunities. Shifting to this sort of ideology would only again advantage those who have gained great profit and wealth by abusing pre-existing advantages, unearned rents, and charters, also known as corporations.

Moving onward through Greco's manifesto for monetary reform at about two third the way down the first page he digresses into a rationalization of credit based money. Again, please, understand that at the surface level of this analysis he uses an example out of micro-economics that has been used to validate macro economic policy. So really again he is objecting to the monopolization of the creation of credit based money by the banking cartel, and advocating in favor of his "all free persons, " which would easily include corporations. As a counter example it would seem that requiring banks to maintain 100% reserves for their extension of loans and having adequate currency in circulation would eliminate credit based loans or money. It was in the creation of too great a debt burden, through macro economic policies and high interest rates, and through the expectation of high returns, which caused the macro-economy to collapse. It seems that even the creation of limited credit based money by natural persons is a slippery slope. The fiat elimination of government infra-structure and social services from the equation also eliminates the possibility of asset based currency being put into permanent circulation. Having sufficient asset based currency in circulation would make credit or debt based currency literally a non-issue, ie. not required. Loans could be based upon accumulated savings, rather than based upon a debt issuance.

On the second page, not quite half way down the page, his rather utopian description of the process of community currencies and exchange has a strong sense of unreality about it. At the level of actual initiatives he seems to have little understanding of the economies of scale that will required to organize and maintain a multi layered complex system particularly in a context largely lacking in much of the way of standards and regulations. He also seems to have a simple idea of just how extensive various social structures are established. A transformation will not occur by a flicking of a switch. It will be very necessary to develop a culture friendly to change and in favor of cooperation. His libertarian ideology would also prevent any sense of value for a commons of any sort. Repeatedly he references various libertarian pundits, who have a rather narrow and ideological perspective. Scientific and practical discourse tends to be validated by the variety of participating perspectives, not by the narrowness of the presentation.

At about the bottom third of the second page the next section is subtitled "The State of the Monetary 'Reform' Movement." The text begins with "Money has been a recurrent political issue, but from World War II on into the 1980s, it became obscured from general public view. The debate shifted away from the proper structuring of money and banking to mere policy issues-- how to operate a system that was deemed by its proponents to be 'the best of all possible worlds.' Even today, the vast majority of people are oblivious to the dysfunctions inherent in the dominant monetary regime and it s impact upon their personal fortunes." (end of quote)

It would be relatively easy to date the disconnection of US citizens from understanding the nature of their monetary system based upon the fraud used to establish the US Federal Reserve and the privatized and centralized US banking institution. There were several reform measure instituted relative the banking sector during the mid 1930's as well as the well publicized Pecora hearings. The lull in any critical examination from about the time that the US began producing munitions and weapons for World War II up to about the 1980s was more or less considered to be a period of prosperity, and simply enough, the mechanics of the monetary system were not generally considered to be a problem. Also during that period , much like other previous periods in US economic history the discourse was narrowed to the point of the role of academic economics was to serve as cheerleaders for corporate economics. Reducing forty years of history of monetary policies and reform to three sentences is more dismissive than explanatory. Laying the burden for the lack of a monetary discourse upon the public, given the routine exclusion of any critical point of view and allowing the complicity of corporately owned media is insulting.

Further on this page he identifies the "The Monetary 'Reform' Movement" as being equal to the innovation of commercial trade associations and in the emergence from the grassroots of mutual credit associations and local currencies. The mystery here for me is that much of what he describes as "reform" still has no detailed understanding of why the established monetary institutions have had the effects they have actually produced. So in effect Greco's "reform movement" has little knowledge of what is needed in the way of actual monetary reform, largely because again his advocacy is based upon ideology, not history and analysis. Greco's interpretation is so oblivious to efforts that been active at the level of citizen involvement in various ways for decades and among marginalized economists for much longer. It also fails to notice initiatives involved for quite sometime in the critiquing of the US economy and of financialized Capitalism generally. The the anti-war movement, labor union movements, and cooperatives have been contexts for consumer education regarding economic democracy since at least the late 1960s. The Humphrey Hawkins Act of 1978 was largely a corrective toward the US Federal Reserve and it was the result of concerns not the beginning of an advocacy, yet Greco ignores it.

At the top of page 3 he describes his version of the monetary reform movement as being prone to burn-out, decline, and failing to sustain its process. In this description there is not even a hint of an admission that the utopian basis of this advocacy, or that a lack of an educational process beyond repeating the utopian slogans and truisms, or that these experiments might be faulty and difficult from their basic design, and that these same factors have added to the obstacles experienced by the community currency advocates.

He next launches into a another list of what he refers to as "pertinent questions:"
"What are the main factors responsible for these patterns? How much can mutual aid credit and community currency systems be made to sustain themselves, and to thrive beyond the initial spurt of enthusiasm? And perhaps more importantly, was posed by one of my(Greco's) correspondents. 'What are the underlying issues that are preventing everyone seeking monetary reform from working together?' and 'How can we build synergy toward empowerment of the people?' " (end of quote)

The first part of his response to the last two questions above goes like this "If we can find satisfactory answers to these last two questions, we will, I (Greco) think, be well on our way toward answering the others. Here are some of my views on that. First of all, there are, on the one hand, those who are aiming at monetary reform, and, on the other, those who are seeking to transcend the dominant structures of money and banking. These two approaches are quite different from one another. The former accepts as given the socio-political foundations of the present regime and does not question it basic assumptions. The latter takes little for granted and seeks to reinvent money and banking to serve their intended purposes; it is a more thoroughgoing, more 'radical' approach that begins from a particular set of principles and ideals." (end of quote) And just what is the basis of this promised "satisfaction?"

The clever part of this whole pseudo Socratic digression is that the practical questions have remained unanswered. He places himself in the position of the nominal 'radicalism,' making no useful suggestions about the sustainability of particular currencies and exchanges. His reply revolves around a quote from another libertarian German economic philosopher, essentially again rejecting statism of all forms. This approach actually cultivates a nihilistic anarchism which is reactionary toward most forms of cooperation except full and unequivocal acceptance of its libertarian doctrine, as not much more than a campfire sing along.

More and more Greco's approach seems to be designed to promote frustration and to create factions within what might be otherwise be a functional initiative. That he also actually excludes anyone who might be involved in a different process of monetary reform as being not even recognized and then frames the process as if it were a one ring circus. He never demonstrates an extensive knowledge of how the established conventions operate. He advocates for a grass roots process with no benchmarks principles, and a misplaced sense of 'radicalism' which is guaranteed to generate major frustration. He is advocating for a form of free banking without any concern for the levels of fraud that is likely to be created, and maybe this is actually all a well thought out strategy to frustrate and diminish any movement toward monetary reform. The fallacy is the assumption that he is proposing any practical process of reform of the banking and monetary institutions at all. There is no systematic or thorough approach advocated by Greco at all, though he claims those adjectives.

I would strongly suggest that instead of taking Greco's suggestion of reading his favorite German libertarian philosophers, that you look up "Modern Money Mechanics' published in 1962 by the US Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and available on the internet. Or another path to understanding is to find a book covering some aspects of economic and monetary history and then read until you understand most of it, then take a piece of it that you found interesting, and seek out more information on that. There are several introductory books available through public libraries. Seek out sources on the internet until you start understanding better what the current structure is and what would be a realistic and necessary monetary reform agenda.

It is by authors such as Greco that readers will come away less informed, not more informed. At the very minimum it seems grossly unwise to establish a popular version of free market economics as guiding philosophy of a community currency and exchange process when free market economics has been a major contributor to our present economic collapse. Remember that President Reagan was also an anti-state sort of Republican, for whom deregulating corporate behavior was seen as a highly desirable goal. At the same time he had no problem cultivating wide cynicism in the process of governance, while using that governance process to substantially increase the profits of those corporations. Even though Greco has a substantial following, the standards he uses are largely ideological rather than historical or pragmatic. In any field of popular interest there will be a number of popular level authors and speakers attracted by the possibility of income and minor celebrity status. It is probable that it is not even possible to deter the level of mis-information that they tend to promote to those eager to be misled.

It is also true that the history of popular interest in monetary and economic reform have had significant aspects that amount to not just incidental mistakes or slightly different interpretations, but material that amounts to full fledged dis-information designed to confuse and disable any pragmatic approach or political advocacy. Greco's material qualifies as disinformation, even though in his books he does use historical exanples as validation for his approach, but always he does not work from the history and practice forward. His core advocacy is centered on his libertarian economics, which given the very recent catastrophic results of the influence of a very similar ideology upon the actual regulatory institutions intended to prevent fraud and upon the formulation of economic policy, it seems obvious that this perspective is largely bankrupt. In the end Greco transcends exactly nothing as well as any responsibility for the legality or the organizational sustainability of these initiatives.

A recent reviewer of Greco's new edition, entitled End of Money and the End of Civilization, claims that he "is the most radical writer on money today." Having the willingness to make this judgement, seems to depend strongly on both the applied level of understanding of the facts and history related to money as a legalized institution to facilitate exchange and no doubt also on what is intended by the word "radical." Relative to "radical" in the sense of going to the root of the matter, first you have to figure out where that root is. If "radical" is being used to refer to a degree of being delusional, unfortunately Greco remains at least second best relative to another writer on monetary issues. He does though stand in a legacy of writers and presenters about monetary issues which has been modestly adept at misinformation and has had the patronage of the corporate piggy bank.

The harm that Greco's deliberate ignorance and ideological blinders have caused to the sincere interest in community economics by way of community currencies and community exchanges may be irreversible. If so, there is little point to the effort of this review. Though perhaps it is still possible to have an informed approach to community economics and to the historical practices of our current monetary institutions, without being assaulted by ideological sermonizing. Greco's variety of reactionary libertarianism also fully denies the importance of a functional commons which includes managing most environmental assets and the regulation of a sovereign monetary system. If the influence of Greco and others of similarly diversionary intent is reversible, then perhaps a wider discussion can be established that is more scientific as an open and informed discourse. It is also possible to merge the informed approach to monetary reforms and concerns for for the sustainability of our communities, as contrasted to Greco's "radical" patented medicine. That possibility will be detailed as a LETS 2.0 model in another essay.