The Guardian Political Review of New Zealand Reviews We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform

“This new book is an edited collection of articles by the author, published on websites in the last two years, on the causes of the developing “credit crunch” and its implications for the future. Each article covers a different aspect of his subject.

“Cook has a background of service in the U.S. administration, including as a government analyst in the Treasury Department, from which he retired in January 2007. This has given him a valuable ‘insider’s view’ of the economy, but his interest in the money system was started with his reading in 1979-80 of articles on Social Credit, the movement based on the ideas of Major C.H. Douglas, published in the 1920s in The New Age by its editor A.R. Orage.

“This convinced him of the basic flaw in the money system, of a chronic shortage of purchasing power ‘compensated’ by mushrooming levels of debt and eased by price-inflation (which reduces the real value of outstanding debts), leading to the multiple problems now climaxing. To remedy this, he identified the need for National Dividends/Basic Income to distribute to everyone their entitlement to the abundance now potentially available (and so giving them economic security) along with price-subsidies, funded with new money.

“A valuable addition to the literature on the current hot topic.”

Extract from a review by Brian Leslie, editor “Sustainable Economics,” February 2009.