Glocal Econ 7: Water Slipping Through Our Fingers Like Money

Homework due:

• Reading: Web of Debt Ch. 14, 15 & 16
• Audio: Wizards of Money 7 – The Money Cycle vs. the Water Cycle: transcript
• Video: Blue Covenant: Maude Barlow and the Water Crisis

Q’s for Ch. 14 – Harnessing the Lion: The Federal Income Tax

1. What does direct taxation mean? What are excise taxes? What was the deal struck in the Federalist Debates? Was Ben Franklin’s statement true about death and taxes?
2. How many years did the US not have an income tax? When it was needed to support a war, what was the rate and how was it collected? What percent of the population did it apply to? What income bracket would that affect today?
3. How did the Supreme Court rule concerning income taxes? How did Wall Street get around it? Why didn’t this concern wealthy businessmen?
4. What does “passing the buck” really mean? How did Roosevelt increase the percentage of taxpayers from 3 to 62? What percent of the average citizen’s income may be going to taxes?
5. How many States did Bill Benson discover that had ratified the 16th Amendment?
6. Who was Philander Knox and what did he do for Carnegie, for McKinley, for JP Morgan, and for Rockefeller? How was he rewarded? Is he any relation to Fort Knox?
7. What was the original purpose of the federal income tax? What percentage is spent on government services, according to the Grace Commission Report? How is the rest spent?

Q’s for Ch. 15 – Reaping the Whirlwind: The Great Depression

1. What year did the stock market crash? How did the Roaring Twenties set things up for the Great Depression? What did the Robber Barons convince people to do in the stock market? What is “betting the farm?”
2. What did Strong and Norman determine to do? How did this lead to a crash of the stock market? How did the wealthy insiders avoid the collapse? What was their key gain from the Depression?
3. What was put into place instead of disbanding the Federal Reserve? Who funded it and who did it serve? What’s the difference between a payoff, a sell off, and a bailout? How does the IMF relate to the FDIC?
4. What did Congressman McFadden do regarding the Federal Reserve Board? From observing the Board members interviewed in Inside Job and The Fed Under Fire, what do you think of them?
5. What was The Banker’s Manifesto of 1934 and what did it say? What did it recommend for bankers to do, how would this benefit the bankers, and what was the overarching goal?
6. Who ran for office 13 times and on what Party ticket? Who won against him? How was his economic plan put into practice? How did it differ? How was he honored at 90?
7. How did William Hope Harvey, author of Coin’s Financial School, view debt? What was the mechanism by which it worked, and to what would it lead? What was the sleight-of-hand at the heart of it? What was his solution?

Q’s for Ch. 16 – Oiling the Rusted Joints of the Economy: Roosevelt, Keynes and the New Deal

1. What are some of the programs that the New Deal enacted? What does “parity-pricing” mean? What replaced it and at what cost?
2. Who suggested borrowing to “prime the pump?” What’s another term for this? What did he suggest for the IMF’s reserve currency? What was chosen instead?
3. How did it affect unemployment? Inflation? Although it turned classic theory on its head, what was its fatal flaw? In seven years what happened to the federal income tax? How many times over did the federal debt increase from then to 2005, and how much has it risen to today? How did this affect the US family?
4. Explain Robert Hemphill’s argument for issuing debt-free money. What did Congressman Wright Patman say we needed to get back to? How did Roosevelt sidestep the banking cartel? What did he change about the Federal Reserve?
5. What controversial step did Roosevelt take? What led him to do this? How did he do this? Is there a clue here to solving our current dilemma?
6. What happened to private owners of gold? What did McFadden accuse Roosevelt of doing? What did he call the bankruptcy of the Fed?
7. By 1929 how many companies were in charge of half of all US industry? What important legislation did Roosevelt pass and what did it do? What commission was formed? Who testified before Congress that he’d been commissioned by the Morgans to kill Roosevelt? Do you know anything more about this historical figure?
8. What did the Thomas Amendment authorize? What happened to McFadden?