Culture Corner:
“The U.S. And the Holocaust” and “The Lords of Easy Money:
How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy

Sep 26, 2022

Videos: The U.S. and The Holocaust, Ken Burn’s three-part six-hour documentary, produced and directed by Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein, airing, or available for streaming on Public Broadcasting TV stations or on the PBS website.

Some may wonder if another program on the Holocaust is just a rehashing of already-known facts. However, Ken Burns and his co-directors focus on a different take: they examine the role of the United States and its relationship to the events in Germany. They show how the U.S.’s genocide of native peoples and its horrific Jim Crow culture served as a model for the Nazis. They examine closely the attitudes and beliefs of the American people, and show how these helped to shape events. And they make these events real with interviews of survivors and historians, and photographs and letters.

Even though their analysis remains sympathetic to Roosevelt and his administration, it is not sympathetic to the policies that invoked this genocide.

Book: The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy by Christopher Leonard, 2022

This book draws back the curtain that hides the banks and their system and exposes their tricks and frantic maneuvers for all to see. It explains incredibly complicated and high stakes bank moves in ways that ordinary people can understand.

The story is beyond belief! It follows the Federal Reserve as it funneled hundreds of trillions of dollars, slowly at first and then in an ever-accelerating manner, to stave off banking crisis after crisis. This book reveals and explains in everyday terms the moves of the Fed, behind the scenes in thrilling and horrifying detail. It is especially helpful to understand today now that Jerome Powell and the Fed are raising interest rates and tightening the money supply, and we are, again, on the brink of a worldwide recession.