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The financial crisis in America today could be over almost instantaneously through monetary reform. Monetary reform is a fundamental shift in how America creates money. The shift is from a Robber Baron-era design of banks creating credit to lend to us at interest and ever-increasing debt, to our community (government) creating it for the direct payment of public goods and services. The benefits of monetary reform are conservatively $1 TRILLION every year, the end of the national debt, and full employment.

Please review the links above to fully understand this idea.

The power of monetary reform is evident in history. Napoleonic France quickly became the world’s leading economy and Paris its most beautiful city after ten years of violent revolution that killed or drove-off their economic leadership. Nazi Germany overcame tragic-comic hyperinflation to become the model economy during the Great Depression. These nations were in worse economic conditions than America today (economic power needs to be invested in the public good, not for empire).

This top 10 list of Americans who understood monetary reform deserve your attention. Given our economic condition, you literally have nothing more valuable for your attention. Each of the ten gives unique and added perspective for your learning of this multi-trillion dollar topic.

Peter Cooper (1791-1883) was one of America’s leading inventors and businessmen. He designed and built the first US locomotive in 1830, the “Tom Thumb.” Cooper was the first to introduce anthracite coal into iron production in 1845, resulting in the US’ first wrought iron beams for construction. In 1854, Cooper was a founder in the telegraph company that created the first trans-Atlantic cable. He patented Jell-O. In 1859, he founded The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a university in New York City that grants full scholarships to the nation’s brightest students with express admittance to all regardless of race, religion or sex. Peter Cooper was the newly-formed National Greenback Party candidate for President in 1876. Cooper learned about monetary policy from Albert Gallatin, US Secretary of the Treasury from 1801-1814.

The following 14 paragraphs are the summation of his life-long experience of the benefits of monetary reform that he witnessed from Andrew Jackson ending the privately-owned 2nd Bank of the United States and promptly paying-off the national debt, the US government directly issuing Greenbacks to pay for the Civil War rather than borrow the money, and then the economic depression when that policy was rescinded in favor of the federal government again borrowing money, as we do today. This was his address at the Convention of the National Greenback Party in Boston on June 4, 1879. This third-party received 3.3% of the popular vote in the 1880 US presidential election.

Following the life-perspective on the US monetary system of Peter Cooper is a 10-minute interview with Patrick Carmack, the producer of the acclaimed documentary of monetary history, the Money Masters.

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“I think, that the neglect of our several administrations to make laws, that shall properly regulate the currency, both in volume and value, has been a greater cause of demoralization, want and misery among the mass of the people, than all other causes combined.

The American people have a right to demand of their Government a substantial reason for having taken from them their money, used by them for years as the currency of the country without cost to the Government. Our present Secretary of the Treasury declared in the Senate that 'every citizen of the United States had conformed his business to the clause of the law regulating the currency of the country.'

I believe it will be impossible for our Government to show a good reason for having taken from the people their circulating notes, possessing (as the late Secretary McCulloch stated at the banquet, given by the New York Chamber of Commerce) 'all the legal attributes of money.' The Secretary at the same time said, that, 'In the very year, in which the war was closed, the reduction of the debt was commenced, and the reduction has been steadily continued, to the amazement of foreign nations.'

This debt, so called, was also 'the credit of a great nation, cut up into small pieces and circulated as money;' as was well said by Secretary Chase. What shall we think of the administration of a Government, expressly designed, 'by the people and for the people,' that should turn their circulating credit and their real money, into a debt which stops that circulation, vital as it is to the trade and prosperity of this people, and makes it a burden of bonds and taxes on their industry?
It will be equally impossible to show a good reason for having taken from the people their fractional currency, which was costing the Government nothing, and supplying its place with a more inconvenient currency, at the cost of thirty-two millions of dollars, added to the National debt.

The amount, already paid by the people as interest on the National debt, apart from any payments on account of the principal, is already one thousand, two hundred and twenty-four millions of dollars.

I have long been compelled to believe, that all that is now or ever has been required to secure permanently, is a safe deposit for all the unoccupied moneys of the country, and an ever strengthening bond of National union, as well as the best currency, that our country or the world ever saw, will be for the Government to do now, what should have been done at the close of the civil war,—and at the close of the war of Revolution against England—namely, to make the people’s money, found in circulation at the close of the war the sole money of the country, and the unflactuating measure of all values, receivable for all forms of taxes, duties and debts, and interconvertible with the interest-bearing bonds of the Government, which should bear an equitable but low rate of interest.

…How can we, as a Republican and a free people, control the Financial Institutions and the policy of this Government in the interest and prosperity of the whole people?
It is evident, that some fatal errors have been committed, some where, by which want, ruin and distress have been introduced, where before was prosperity, abundance and full employment for the enterprise and industry of this nation.

Individuals may suffer from extravagance, over-trading or over-production; but how can a whole nation have its joy and prosperity turned into mourning, but by the fatal errors of its ruling classes, which make the laws, and can thus mete out injustice and dry up the resources of a nation by rapacity and greed of gain, instead of diffusing happiness, education and freedom among the people.

Misgovernment and the faults of the ruling class have always proved in history the trouble and sorrow of nations. All the responsibility of a nation’s happiness, which may depend on a people’s laws and administration, must rest upon those, who are, for the time, the law making and administrative class.

Though the influences, that are now working against the rights of labor and the true interests of a Republican Government, are insidious and concealed under plausible reasons, yet the danger to our free institutions, now, is no less than in the inception of the rebellion, that shook our Republic to its centre. It is only another oligarchy, another enslaving power, that is asserting itself against the interest of the whole people. There is fast forming in this country an aristocracy of wealth—the worst form of aristocracy, that can curse the prosperity of any country. For such an aristocracy has no country—“absenteeism,” living abroad, while they draw their income from the country, is one of its common characteristics. Such an aristocracy is without soul and without patriotism. Let us save our country from this, its most potent, and, as I hope, its last enemy. I beseech you, fellow-citizens, to consider well what the crisis of the country demands of you, not losing sight of the fact, that there are great wrongs which must be righted in the administration of the finances of this country for the last twelve years. Old issues of North and South are, in a great measure, passing away, but there is no section of our common country, that needs so much the reviving influence of an abundant and a sound currency, as the South. The Southern people have the finest natural resources, that our country affords; every facility for manufacture—the material, labor and water-power indefinite. They need only money, wisely distributed among its working and enterprising population, for their work and their enterprise, which may draw out the money, and put it to the best use. It was well said, lately, by one of the Southern statesmen, that the 'Government had impoverished, discomfited, and crushed the South more by its financial policy, since peace was declared, than by its arms during the whole war of Rebellion!'

If the people can look for no relief from the present Congress and Administration—if those, who now sway the financial interests of the country cannot see their great opportunity—then new men must be chosen by the people, whom they can trust to make laws, and execute measures, that 'shall secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity.'

I will close my remarks by a quotation from a speech of Daniel Webster. He declared that 'The producing cause of all prosperity is labor, labor, labor. The Government was made to protect this industry, and to give it both encouragement and security. To this very end, with this precise object in view, power was given to Congress over the currency and over the money of the country.'”
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“The bankers will favor a course of special legislation to increase their power…They will never cease to ask for more, …so long as there is more that can be wrung from the toiling masses of the American People…The struggle with this money power has been going on from the beginning of the history of this country.”
– Peter Cooper, famous American inventor in his letter to President Hayes, June 1, 1877.