What I Took From Goodson's Central Banking History
I finished the book. Here is what I am keeping, what I am throwing out, and who I would still hand it to. No last twist, and no cliffhanger.
A history of central banking and the enslavement of mankind
The 2008 Crash, Debt Money, and Goodson's Last Chapter
Chapter VIII is the last real chapter. Goodson wants 2008 to prove a 300-year rule: private banks create money as debt, blow the system up, then sell the next rescue. The first half is the strongest stretch of the book, and the last stretch is a rant.
North Dakota, Guernsey, and Gaddafi's Libya
Chapter VII is the cleanest stretch of the book, and also the messiest. Goodson finally points at living institutions. Two of them are small and interesting. The third is an oil state run by a dictator, and he treats it like a workers’ paradise NATO had to kill.
State Banking in Germany, Italy, and Japan in the 1930s
This is the chapter where Goodson stops circling and just says it. National Socialist Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan are his proof that state banking works. World War II, in his telling, happened because bankers needed that model dead.
The Great Depression, the BIS, and the Chicago Plan
Chapter V is where Goodson tries to prove the Depression was not a crash. It was a fleece. He walks from the Bank for International Settlements to Louis McFadden’s House speech, then to two money theories that are more interesting than the villain list.
The Russian State Bank, the Boer War, and World War I
This stretch of Chapter IV is Goodson at full volume. He tours Tsarist Russia, the Boer War, Australia’s Commonwealth Bank, and World War I as one plot. The money history is specific. The ethnic story is the usual glue.
America vs the Fed: Goodson's Century of Struggle
Chapter IV, part one, is the American money war as Goodson tells it. Colonial paper that worked, two Banks of the United States that did not, Lincoln’s greenbacks, then Jekyll Island and a Federal Reserve he says was never built for the public.
Napoleon vs the Bankers: The Banque De France Story
Chapter III is Napoleon as a money guy, not just a general. Goodson wants you to see a ruler who refused to borrow for day-to-day war, built one note-issuing bank, paved half of Europe, and then lost to people who could fund every army at once.
The Hidden Origins of the Bank of England
Chapter II is the origin story Goodson cares about most. Not Rome. London. He wants you to see the Bank of England, 1694, as the moment a king sold the right to create money and never got it back.
How Usury Destroyed the Roman Empire, According to Goodson
Goodson starts his money history in Rome, and he is not trying to be subtle. Public bronze means a healthy republic. Private silver and gold mean landlords, debt, and collapse. Chapter I is a three-metal morality play about who gets to stamp the coins.
The Foreword That Admits This Book Will Make You Mad
The first page does not defend the book. It flinches, then dares you to keep reading. Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi says he does not endorse every viewpoint inside, and that people will still stamp it as heresy.
Why I'm Reading Goodson's History of Central Banking
I picked up a book whose title already sounds like a fight. It claims the people who print money also own the wars, the busts, and most of the last three thousand years. I am going to read it slowly, chapter by chapter, and say what holds.