Most people know very little about the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States. Throughout their schooling years they have heard next to nothing about this institution. Beyond the touting of simplistic general concepts, little exposure to the actual workings of the Federal Reserve is ever given the chance. It is told that the Federal Reserve is the lender of last resort, a safety net put in place to save the people from the dangers of unbridled capitalism, an institution created to maintain near full employment, and a protector of the nation’s money. But those familiar with the workings of the central bank know that this institution, and the whole banking system under it, is the real danger.

So here we are, nearly a century after the inception of the Fed, and everywhere you turn you can hear all sorts of chatter negatively directed toward the institution. No longer are those that shined such a dissenting light on central banking quickly discredited and ignored. Those sympathetic to a true free market find themselves less likely nowadays to be written off as conspiracy theorists, cranks, or contrarians…as if these are invalidating qualities anyway.

But why the sudden change of tone? Why now? Have the masses suddenly realized the destructive methods of the central bank? Is it all of a sudden apparent that the Federal Reserve is simply ripping the people off?

Some claim that it is merely our current economic circumstances that have triggered us to question our rulers more than before, to finally investigate how the government affords to sustain the unsustainable, to realize that the American economy is nothing like a free market, and to even ponder the existence of the Federal Reserve?

The crisis most certainly has much to do with sobering up the masses. But I am convinced that the only reason we can now productively discuss the imperious history, methodology, and necessity of the Federal Reserve is because of one man - Ron Paul.

There is no denying that governments thrive on testing their limits through the usurpation of power. The US government is no different as evident by its current formation, its total disregard of constitutional limits, and its collusion with the Federal Reserve. Your freedoms are incrementally being seized. There seems to be only two ways to protect yourself: take control of your wealth or reform government. Since you have little influence over the latter, you must learn to take control of your wealth. There is freedom in financial independence.

Jeff Nabers and Phoebe Chongchua come together to show you the means to financial liberation. In their book, "5 STEPS TO FREEDOM: How to Cut Your Dependence on Institutions and Escape Financial Slavery", they set out to prove that the customary methods of saving and investing are nothing of the sort. They show you how to take control of your money, revealing the incapacities and detriments of simply stashing your cash or participating in the stock market. We have lost our sense of differentiating between prices and value. We are too often concerned with the nominal value of our holdings and fail to see what they’re really worth. "5 STEPS TO FREEDOM" teaches you how to see true value. I particularly love the way the authors pose the commonly used phrase, “numbers don’t lie”, and then follow with, “yes they do!”

In the mid-1990s, when I was engaged in the research that would eventually be published early in 1997 in an article titled "Regime Uncertainty" (a modestly revised version of which appears as chapter 1 of my Depression, War, and Cold War), I had not read Raymond Moley's book After Seven Years, published in 1939. Mea culpa. I should have read it much earlier. I am embarrassed to admit that although I purchased a copy in a used-book store many years ago, it sat on my shelf unread until recently.

I spent much of my recent vacation reading Henry Hazlitt's chapter-by-chapter demolition of Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), The Failure of the "New Economics" (1959). I didn't expect to read the book cover to cover, but after only a few pages I had to keep going. It is that well-written and interesting. I'm now a few pages from the end.

The more I read the more I thought: Keynes was surely joking. No one in his position could really be that confused, contradictory, and ignorant of economic logic. It had to be a gag on the economics profession, an emperor-with-no-clothes experiment.

In Hamilton's Curse, author Dr. Thomas J. DiLorenzo traces the roots of America's economic and political systems to the first secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. We are truly living in "Hamilton's Republic," says Dr. DiLorenzo -- but this is far from a good thing.