Joseph Schreiner: Author and Columnist

Why I Wrote The Silver Insurrection - East

Worm Moon, 13 March 2025

The total lunar eclipse of March 2025 is a dramatic launch for my column. I would like to devote this entry to how and why I wrote The Silver Insurrection – East (TSIE). I had three goals in mind, goals which are not necessarily compatible with each other. The first goal, which is that of every fiction author, is to write an engaging story. I chose the genre of political thriller, though financial thriller would also be an apt description. Such thrillers come with conventions and reader expectations. If I had to comment on what distinguishes TSIE from most others in its genre, I would say it is the protagonists. There is no one protagonist in the story. Rather, there are a dozen protagonists, each working in his or her own way to bring about an economic revolution in Southeast Asia. If that were not intricate enough, TSIE also has a half dozen antagonists.

My second goal was to inform the reader about matters that are deliberately obscured. The average person has little knowledge about the nature of money (fiat currency) and banking. Public schools, that is, schools run by and for the government, have a vested interest in maintaining this ignorance. I hope that my novel provides this much-needed knoweldge.

Fiat currency, fractional reserve banking, and central banks together form a vast theft machine. They steal the wealth of honest laborers and bestow it upon parasitic classes. The debasement of currency (called inflation to make it sound innocuous) steals wealth from those who save. Loans to enable government spending are theft from future generations. The interest payments on these loans are theft from the present generation of workers.

Moreover, this theft machine is used to enable a legion of evils: war among countries, imperialism, the drug war, the surveillance state, mass incarceration, the transfer of wealth from producers to parasites, asset bubbles … All this would be impossible under a system of sound money and banking.

My third goal builds upon the second: to raise awareness. Once a reader becomes aware of how the terrible trinity of fiat currency, fractional reserve banking, and central banks is a vehicle for theft and evil, he or she wonders what can be done to rectify the situation. Henry Ford’s apocryphal quote comes to mind: “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

The second and third goals, education and awareness, compliment and support each other. The first goal, entertainment, however, is not so easily joined with the other two. Few enjoy a preachy story. Yet great novels have influenced history. Another quote comes to mind, that of Andrew Breitbart:”Politics is downstream from culture.” Stories are integral to culture.

I cannot claim that TSIE is among such great works, but I do what I can. Only time, and my readers, will tell whether I have succeeded, in some small way, in achieving these three goals.

For those who are interested, I hope to write a sequel, titled, naturally, The Silver Insurrection – West.