Aaron Wissner

I am in the early stages of writing a book on money and energy which answers the question: "What is really going on?"

Money and Energy Book by Aaron Wissner

I will be using select bits of the writing I've been doing on this topic over the past few years:

Value System: Analysis of Money, Energy, and Civilization by Aaron Wissner

I've been reading articles on this topic for a number of years, and am bookmarking the more interesting ones on my Delicous page.

Aaron Wissner's Money, Energy, and Interesting Bookmarks on Delicous

Finally, in preparing to write the Money and Energy Book, and in preparation for doing other works, I've been doing the reading and viewing below.

Reading and Viewing I've Done Thus Far in 2009 (in more or less chronological order)

• Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution -- Thomas L. Friedman (stopped at p. 171, "solutions")
• The Great Crash, 1929 -- Kenneth Galbraith, 1954 -- (stopped at about p. 160)
• Crash Course (2008 film, documentary)
• Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender -- Thomas Greco  (reread chapter 4 on 8/26/2009)
• BerkShares (assorted TV news and online stories)
• Ithaca Hours (assorted TV news and online stories)
• Calgary Dollar (assorted TV news and online stories)
• Money As Debt (2007 film, documentary)
• The Great Crash, 1929 -- John Kenneth Galbraith (stopped at about 3/5 mark)
• Coming Home: E.F. Schumacher and the Reinvention of the Local Economy (2009 film, documentary)
• Feed-In Tariff Renewable Energy event (Lansing, MI) - video recorded four talks on feed in tariffs, uploaded one
• The Ecology of Money -- Richard Douthwaite
• Milk (2008 film, based on historical events, about person murdered for due to his use of freedom of expression)
• Flow: For Love of Water (2008 film)
• Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free -- Ellen Hodgson Brown
• The Story of Stuff (2007 film, documentary, about destruction via consumption)
• Earth Day Expo (Rochester, Michigan, video recorded talks on climate change and voluntary simplicity)
• Slumdog Millionaire (2008 film, about living life of poverty in a destroyed environment)
• Affluenza (documentary)
• As The World Burns: 60 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial -- Derrick Jensen
• Endgame (video talk) -- Derrick Jensen
• What We Leave Behind -- Derrick Jensen
• Life and Debt (2001 film, documentary, about how corporations & government destroy communities)
• The Century of the Self - Part 1: Happiness Machines (2002 film, documentary)
• Valkyrie (2008 film, based on historical events, about plan of resistance  to murder Hitler)
• Michigan Energy Fair (taped talks on Passive House, wind turbine production, peak oil, community electricity, etc.)
• What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire (2007 film, documentary, about our culture's overall situation)
• Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? (2008 film, documentary, about global cultural similarities & differences)
• The Unforseen (2007 film, documentary, about the impacts of the concept of "property")
• The Slope of Dysfunction - Dmitry Orlov (essay)
• Without the King (2007 film, documentary, about power, unorganized resistance and the last king in Africa
• Reinventing Collapse:  The Soviet Example and American Prospects -- Dmitri Orlov
• Religulous (2008 film, documentary, about illogical and destructive nature of religions)
• The Culture of Make Believe -- Derrick Jensen - pp. 1-225 so far
• The Money Masters (1990's documentary, watched first 100 minutes so far)
• Money as Debt (2006 film, documentary, about money creation, usury, etc.), (rewateched in Aug.)
• Money as Debt II: Promises Unleashed (2009 film, documentary), (rewatched in Aug.)
• Tales of Adam -- Daniel Quinn (2005) - very short, half-hour read
• Our Local Future: Peak Oil, Climate Change, and the End of Money - 30 min. presentation I created
• The End of Money and the Future of Civilization -- Thomas Greco (2009) - pp. 1-40, 87-100 so far
• Work, Work, Work -- Daniel Quinn (2006) - "children's" book
• The Holy -- Daniel Quinn (2002) - completed (2009/08/03)
• Endgame: Volume 1 -- Derrick Jensen -- pp. 1-20 so far
• The Obama Deception -- Something is definitely going on in the world, something that the general public isn't putting together, so it makes sense to consider arguments that we might normally dismiss out of hand.  This film is interesting because it was a mix of things that I've already learned about, the film sometimes agreeing with what I've learned, and in other cases disagreeing.  For example, its pretty clear that Obama did not follow through with a number of his campaign promises once elected, that the Federal Reserve is not a government agency, that the control of money is vitally important to any people, and that Obama seems to be the head of a cult of personality.  On the other hand, the notion that climate change is a scam and that energy isn't important (since it wasn't included in the film at all) doesn't mesh with everything I've learned and spent a lot of time researching. (2009/08/21)
• Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve, 1996 -- (transcript) -- 42 min., (YouTube) -- (2009/08/22) -- Bias towards abolishing Fed and central planning, and backing money with gold.  General Note:  The weakest links, the poorest understanding, on the side of the government, have allowed a system that has perpetually more problems.
• I.O.U.S.A., plus all DVD extras, 2008 -- 85 min. (2009/08/23, second viewing)
• Banking and Money by Salman Khan, Khan Academy, first 21 videos (2009/08/25), quite good, worth a second viewing to take notes down, starts from people holding gold, all the way up to fractional reserve without backing
• Credit Crisis by Salman Khan, Khan Academy, 13 of 15 videos (2 unavailable), (2009/08/25) on the housing price bubble, mortgage backed securities, collateralized debt obligations (CBO), credit default swaps, and wealth destruction (to home owners and banks in declining real estate market)
• Current Economics by Salman Khan, Khan Academy, first 8 videos, (2009/08/25), interesting arguments that falling capacity utilization leads to falling prices, looking at rising unemployment figures implies falling capacity utilization, which in turn suggests deflation, and that the negative savings rate will turn positive, which will cause more lack of spending, leading to even less consumption, with the implication being that the next few years will see a deflationary situation (or spiral)
• Paulson Bailout by Salman Khan, Khan Academy, first 14 videos (2009/08/25), basically shows how the bailout money just gets held by all the banks as they try to deleverage to save themselves from their own toxic assets, or the chance that loans they have made are to others with toxic assets (who might be insolvent or bankrupt); and talks about why using that money to create new banks might be a better option
• Geitner Plan by Salman Khan, Khan Academy, first 8 videos (1-7, 2.5), (2009/08/25), explains how Fed and Treasury money are channeled into the banks, most likely never to be repaid, to buy the worthless "troubled" assests for much more than the market would pay
• Ecological Economics by Robert Costanza, (he starts speaking at 5 min.), 55 minute video

To Read List

• Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change -- William Catton
• Collapse: How Civilizations Choose to Fail or Succeed -- Jared Diamond *
• The Collapse of Complex Societies -- Joseph Tainter
• The Future of Money -- Bernard Lietaer
• Endgame (Volumes II) -- Derrick Jensen
• A Language Older than Words -- Derrick Jensen
• The Transition Handbook:  From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience -- Rob Hopkins *
• The Man Who Grew Young -- Daniel Quinn
• Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis -- Richard Heinberg
• Small is Beautiful:  Economics as if People Mattered -- E. F. Schumacher
• World Made by Hand -- James Howard Kunstler *
• Silent Spring -- Rachel Carson
• Against Civilization: Reading and Reflections -- John Zerzan
• The World Without Us -- Alan Weisman
• Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future -- Bill McKibben
• The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism -- Naomi Klein
• Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America -- Ward Churchill
• In Search of the Primitive -- Stanley Diamond
• The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late -- Thom Hartman
• The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community -- David C Korten
• Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television -- Jerry Mander
• The Dream of the Earth -- Thomas Berry
• Atlas Shrugged -- Ayn Rand
• The Revolution: A Manifesto -- Ron Paul
• The Selfish Gene -- Richard Dawkins
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference -- Malcolm Gladwell
• The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbably -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Lost Science of Money: The Mythology of Money, The Story of Power -- Stephen Zarlenga

* I have copies of these and done some reading but have not completed them.

To View List

• Zeitgeist
• Zeitgeist II
• The Power of Nightmares
• The Century of Self
• Escape From Affluenza

Lists of Possibly Interesting Documentaries

• Zeitgeist.com
• HTFiddler.net
• UnitedDiversity.com

Upcoming Events of Interest

• Great Lakes BIONEERS Conference Traverse City -- Environmental Sustainability
• Passive House USA Conference
• Conference Program - 2009 ASPO-USA Peak Oil Conference
• The American Monetary Institute - Monetary Reform Conference

Other Projects I've Worked on Recently

PowerPoint Tips 101

PV Panels Live Monitoring

Aaron Wissner Reading and Viewing I've Done in 2009 by Aaron Wayne Wissner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.