From Amazon (see all reviews): This Book Should Scare You Straight!!!, July 5, 2008 By John R. Linnell (New Gloucester, ME United States) - See all my reviews Top 1000 Reviewer       Forget what party you may be supporting. Forget a lot of things you have been told about how our economy works. Read this book and you will begin to understand things that we have been kept in the dark and lied to for decades by both parties. First of all this is a pretty good story. Secondly, in delivering the story, the author is trying to shake us awake as to what is happening to us and the result is far from pleasant. In fact, the protagonists in the story have a sense of futility as to awakening enough of us to what has been done to our economy that seems difficult to oversome. I was asked to review this novel by the author. I did and I am not sure I was not happier living in ignorance. However, it is better to understand one's life and situation and if you agree with that premise, then please, pick up this book and be prepared to be very, very worried about our econoomy and our future. The "barbarous relic" referred to in the title is the gold standard which at one time in our history tied the value of our currency to that precious metal. If that sounds arcane or old fashioned, I challenge you to read this book and ever feel sanguine again about your economic status in this country, especially if you feel really, really comfortable. How the World Works in a Suspense Thriller, June 21, 2008 By Kenneth R. Rosenberger - See all my reviews    George Ford Smith does an excellent job of distilling the essence of an Austrian School analysis of status quo economics into 277 pages of page-turning suspense. If you're like me, and you read a lot of fiction and history, but can't make it through even the most accessible book on economics (even though you know it's an important subject) without your eyes glazing over, then this book is for you. Smith provides a trenchant survey of the history of money and banking in America, and then gets to the heart of what ails us at the outset of the Third Milennium. As the plot unfolds in his nifty little thriller, his characters manage to find opportunities to expound on how it all went wrong with the Business of America, when we got off track, who was responsible, and how we can get back to the garden, as it were. Do I need to mention that the prescription is as good as gold? As if that weren't enough, Smith excoriates our two-party farce, and why they are wedded to this sad state of affairs called the Federal Reserve System. And the ends the powers-that-be will go to in order to retain their power. A chilling subplot envisions how the Internet could end up being emasculated and bowdlerized to the point where it would be as original and informative as the CBS Evening News. And you would be well-advised to look into the books on the short reading list at the end of Barbarous Relic. If those tomes are a little too daunting, look up some of the more accessible essays by the same authors (Rothbard, Mises, etc). To read these giants is to immediately recognise that you are in the company of common sense. And these are the ideas George Ford Smith is trafficking in Flight of the Barbarous Relic. But none of this is meant to dissuade anyone who is looking for a cracking good tale to occupy a few happy hours. Barbarous Relic is filled with a plethora of interesting characters, good and bad, and once I started it, I couldn't put it down. ripped from the headlines, July 17, 2008 By Jean F. Risley (Lincoln, MA USA) - See all my reviews    The Flight of the Barbarous Relic is a completely unexpected book. George Smith makes a fascinating and suspenseful story out of a question some of us have asked ourselves: "Who stole the value of the money in our wallets?" Inflation is a faceless evil, but the author has managed to put faces and motives on the folks behind the phenomenon. . . . Those who are hurting most are the very ones who are trying to do the right thing--to work for their living, to support their families, to pay their debts, and to live a decent life. Most are too basically honest to believe that they have been robbed on such a scale. Most have trusted and supported the leaders who manage the economic environment in which they live. Business as usual has been going on for a long time. This book, with its different perspective, shows this part of our economic system from the inside. It's a book of mystery, intrigue, and glimpses behind the scenes, which of course makes it fun. But it does also raise some relevant ideas and interesting questions to take away and consider. It is worth a look. Never has there been greater truth in a work of fiction!, August 28, 2008 By J. D. Seagraves (Michigan) - See all my reviews Top 1000 Reviewer This book puts, in novel form, virtually everything every American needs to know about the Federal Reserve, fiat-money central banking, and monetary history, and it does so following an unadulterated Austrian line, without any conspiracy mongering or Antisemitism -- two curses that plague the Honest Money movement. Author George Ford Smith is unique among popular Fed critics in his understanding that the Fed is not bad because it's a "private bank" that generates "windfall profits" for its "shareholders" -- the Fed is bad, truly evil, because it is a government institution designed to provide a blank check for the unbridled growth of the federal government at the expense of liberty. . .http://www.amazon.com/review/product/1438202547/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?_encoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A25E44CFFC4B7T/ref=cm_cr_pr_pdphttp://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A25E44CFFC4B7T/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort%5Fby=MostRecentReviewhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/AJI6WHHKM6RQJ/ref=cm_cr_pr_pdphttp://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/AJI6WHHKM6RQJ/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort%5Fby=MostRecentReviewhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A3HXWQPOIGAFLB/ref=cm_cr_pr_pdphttp://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A3HXWQPOIGAFLB/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort%5Fby=MostRecentReviewhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A3F00QUIXGDTOW/ref=cm_cr_pr_pdphttp://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A3F00QUIXGDTOW/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort%5Fby=MostRecentReviewshapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1shapeimage_1_link_2shapeimage_1_link_3shapeimage_1_link_4shapeimage_1_link_5shapeimage_1_link_6shapeimage_1_link_7shapeimage_1_link_8

“How important is sound money? The whole of civilization depends on it.” - Lew Rockwell

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“The compulsion and coercion to which they [Roman Emperors] resorted could not reverse the trend toward social disintegration which, on the contrary, was caused precisely by too much compulsion and coercion. No Roman was aware of the fact that the process was induced by the government's interference with prices and by currency debasement.” Human Action, Ludwig von Mises, p. 763 (Scholar’s Edition).

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Reviews


From Strike-the-Root:


A Novel Takes Flight by Jim Davies

November 13, 2008


With the intriguing title The Flight of the Barbarous Relic, it's a cleverly crafted story which also presents a good introduction to the Austrian theory of fiat money and the business cycle.

Then why does government force us to use unsound money?

“All paper-money systems, be they national or international, labor under the presence of moral hazard. In the long run, therefore, a global paper money cannot evade the fate of national paper money. It must either collapse in hyperinflation or force the government to adopt a policy of increasing control, and eventually total control, over all economic resources. Both scenarios entail economic disruptions on a scale that we can barely imagine today. The inevitable result would be death for many hundreds of millions of human beings.” The Ethics of Money Production, Jörg Guido Hülsmann, p. 236.