Country Way Review

Review by Jeremy Martineau of
WHAT EVERYBODY REALLY WANTS TO KNOW ABOUT MONEY
by Frances Hutchinson
Published by Jon Carpenter, 1998
ISBN: 1-897766-33-5

I wanted to read this book before passing it to anyone else. Now I can truthfully say read it yourself. "What everyone really wants to know about money" raises those questions which have bothered me ever since economics at university failed to answer the deeper questions I felt inside about the self which social science was missing. This book tells me there has been a conspiracy by orthodox economics to avoid the awkward truth that we humans cannot properly be confined to a definition as mere units of economic production or consumption which it suits today's controllers to make us. Yes there is a conspiracy among those who hold the hidden reins of power. 

How else is it that so few make the decisions, whether in so called democracies or even in dictatorships. We know that the world systems are not what humans or the planet really needs to thrive, but we don't know how to correct the injustices and barbarism and despoliation that is an unavoidable consequence of money as the sole measure of value. However gilded the cage, capitalism enslaves the common people. How to get to a better, fairer world from where we are is going to be hard, but first, read this book, if you dare. Did you know that the Roman Catholic catechism calls for a reform of international economic and financial systems so that they will better promote equitable relationships with less advanced countries. I write this a day after the Nationwide Building Society members voted aganst conversion to a bank. That is one sign of hope that not everyone is blindly following the greasy slide into corruption . They keystone to move in the wall of misunderstanding is that labelled financial value. Move it and you can see that it is not real. Money has become God, and we must dethrone it. 

COMMENT: Tidying through my files over recent weeks,I find a number of reviews of my books that seem worth dusting off and reading through. A good review is one that tempts one to read the book itself. With this in mind, I offer the above and one or two more in the following Understanding Life and Debt. blogspot.com blogs.