Lendman contends that for over one hundred years powerful bankers have used their control over money, credit and debt for private self-enrichment, bankrolling and colluding with the US Congress and administrations to implement laws favouring them. As a result, decades of deregulation, outsourcing, economic financialization, and rabid capitalism followed, producing asset bubbles, record budget and national debt levels, and depression-sized unemployment far higher than reported numbers, albeit manipulated to look better. After the financial crisis erupted in late 2007, even harder times have left Main Street in the early stages of a depression, with recovery pure illusion. Today's contagion has spread out of control, globally. Wall Street got trillions of dollars in a desperate attempt to socialize losses, privatize profits, and pump life back into the corpses by blowing public wealth into a moribund financial sector, failing corporate favourites, and America's aristocracy. While Wall Street boasts it has recovered, industrial America keeps imploding. High-paying jobs are exported. Economic prospects are eroding. Austerity is being imposed, with no one sure how to revive stable, sustainable long-term growth. This book provides a powerful tool for showing people how they've been fleeced, including a plan for constructive change.