Did you know that the well-loved American fairytale The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is more than just a tale of a girl with ruby slippers tripping down a yellow brick road? I loved that book when I was a kid–I remember watching my older sisters playing munchkins in school musical when I was still in kindergarden. I can still be heard belting out Ding Dong the Witch is Dead at inopportune moments–but the allegory was news to me until I read Ellen Brown’s book Web of Debt.

It is well known in economics academia that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz written by L. Frank Baum in 1900 is loaded with powerful symbols of monetary reform which were the core of the Populist movement and the 1896 and 1900 president bid of Democrat William Jennings Bryan.

The yellow brick road (gold standard), the emerald city of Oz (greenback money), even Dorothy’s silver slippers (changed to ruby slippers for the movie version) were the symbol of Baum’s and Bryan’s belief that adding silver coinage to gold would provide much needed money to a depression-strapped, 1890s America. –Secret of Oz

Two of my favorite people talking about money these days are Ben Still and Ellen Brown. Many of you know Ben Still from the highly acclaimed documentary, The MoneyMasters which was released in 1996. It predicted current economic events and is considered THE classic work on monetary reform. Please watch Ben Still’s latest documentary The Secret of Oz (embeded below). Be sure to donate, or do what you can to support him, since he isn’t funded by any government or corporations in getting this message to we the people.

Having private banks create money is the root cause of all world poverty, hunger, disease and misery. And until we fix it, we will never be able to make a dent in these other issues. We can fix this. We can fix it in a matter of months — a year at most. We can make our government the most financially sound in the world — nearly overnight. –Oz Economics

His solution to our current crisis is realistic and easily implemented if we all understand the importance of monetary reform. I also just want to mention here, that I especially appreciate Ben and Ellen’s solutions as they are not fearmongering and advocating going back to the gold standard. Gold is clearly something we need to stop placing so much value on as the mining of this metal is creating all kinds of environmental destruction and human rights abuses–are we men or magpies? Have a look at the crisis in West Papua to understand how destructive gold mining can be.

The Secret of Oz:

For a bit of humorous relief–a cool rap video to lighten the mood after all of this serious business. Money From Thin Air:

Thanks to zzzack for the beautiful photo of the money roll.

This post has been added to the “ParadigmShift” BlogShare