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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.

William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) was an attorney, one of the nation’s most popular public speakers, and the Democratic Party’s choice for President in three elections: 1896, 1900, and 1908. He served as Secretary of State in the Wilson administration; he resigned in protest to Wilson’s support of the Allies in WW I which he saw as leading to US involvement in a war where national security was not threatened.

Bryan’s political populism centered on American monetary policy. He supported an expansion of the money supply in response to a national depression in the 1890’s by rejecting the gold standard, a limitation on currency based on a fractional reserve of gold holdings. We discussed Peter Cooper’s presidential ambition with the Greenback Party, who campaigned for “greenbacks” to be created directly by the federal government for public projects and jobs. This policy compromised into the “free silver” movement to include silver with gold as a legal fractional backing for money. His powerful stand for monetary reform is clearly expressed in his “Cross of Gold” speech in accepting the Democratic Party nomination for President in 1896, quoted below (click here to listen to Bryan’s reading of the speech 25 years later).

The Wizard of Oz (oz. for ounces of silver), was a political allegory of this history, with Bryan portrayed as the lion with a loud roar but no power. Author Frank Baum, hopeful for the wisdom of monetary reform becoming the nation’s monetary policy, wrote that the lion eventually beheaded the great spider, representing the overreaching financial monopolies of Wall Street. Ellen Brown’s Web of Debt walks readers through the details of the history and Oz allegories, in one of the most-read books on monetary reform (I highly recommend it to understand this trillion dollar issue).

Below is Bryan’s brilliant and concise statement for monetary reform. Following is an 18-second video of campaign coverage from 1896, and a 3-minute NPR tribute on the 100th anniversary of Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech.

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“We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin and issue money is a function of government. We believe it. We believe that it is a part of sovereignty, and can no more with safety be delegated to private individuals than we could afford to delegate to private individuals the power to make penal statutes or levy taxes…Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank, and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson rather than with them, and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of government, and that the banks ought to go out of the governing business… When we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other reform will be possible, but until this is done there is no other reform that can be accomplished."
– William Jennings Bryan, Cross of Gold Speech, 1896.