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Rating: 
Summary: Vituperative responses seem organized
Review: I also think everyone should read this book - if only for the eye-opening British and American monetary history. I also noticed that the vicious attackers' comments all came close upon one another at two dates - Oct and Dec, clustered within a few days. Looks like this book is making some one/institution very nervous. I say that vouches for it's accuracy (and that they had nothing factual to offer, outiside of name-calling.) Please read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Turgid and misguided
Review: I read this book from cover to cover (skimming parts) and can assure anyone else who bothers that it is for the soft of brain only. The conspiracy theories advanced stand no scrutiny and would have easily been explained to Mr Rowbotham had he taken the time to get his drafts read by someone with an iota of understanding of banking before he published. Editing could have reduced his argument to perhaps 1/10th of the length with no loss, except for weight of the end product. Avoid like a bad smell or hold nose while reading.
Rating:
Summary: Worth reading
Review: I say worth reading because this book is an example of what claptrap can get published and read. Some semi-educated people will even take it seriously, if a few of the reviews here are to be believed. This book is a good case study in getting the wrong end of the stick and swinging it wildly in all directions. Worth a read - but be prepared for pages of dull and repetitious prose.
Rating:
Summary: It is vital you read this important work
Review: I was given this book to read by my sister who has always had problems with her credit card debt. She said "read this book if you want to know what is going on with debt in the world. Money is all just really debt back to the banks, it's all fake. This book exposes the whole fraud of the system."The difficulty I had with this book is that it is very hard to follow the logic of the author and he seems to exaggerate everything. I got sick of it by about page 200 when the author just started repating himself for the 20th time that there is too much debt and the world is going to ruin. I skipped to the end. His only solution is government handouts of money to people in debt...Where that money comes from is not explained. I gave the author ** because he tries to tackle a serious problem, being rising levels of debt in the world, but he says nothing new or interesting about it and offers only an unrealistic solution to fix the problem.
Rating:
Summary: the detractors can't back up their claims
Review: Judging by some of the reviews posted here some people who have looked at this book feel like they have stumbled onto something profound and new. The same reviewers also use the words: 'disturbing' and 'confusing'. This is a book written by a hack who preys on those 'disturbed' and 'confused' minds by quoting some eminent people out of context, using some real statistics then drawing absurd conclusions. I was lent a copy in April this year and browsed this site out of curiosity and was surprised to see so many people had read it. My understanding is that most of the original print run had to be pulped, and the copy I was lent was a rarity. When I read it I could see why. Poorly written, poorly researched, full of errors of fact and logic (too many to remember now 6 months after reading the book). The title is memorable but perhaps better suited to a B grade horror flick. The publisher was embarassed, I am sure. The author appears to have been swept away in his own world and is probably busy today muttering in some alley-way about lack of coins, and the coming end of the world due to shortage of such. Apparently there are still some 2nd hand copies available. It's a buyer's market, I would say...
Rating:
Summary: Able to confuse some
Review: Judging by some of the reviews posted here some people who have looked at this book feel like they have stumbled onto something profound and new. The same reviewers also use the words: 'disturbing' and 'confusing'. This is a book written by a hack who preys on those 'disturbed' and 'confused' minds by quoting some eminent people out of context, using some real statistics then drawing absurd conclusions. I was lent a copy in April this year and browsed this site out of curiosity and was surprised to see so many people had read it. My understanding is that most of the original print run had to be pulped, and the copy I was lent was a rarity. When I read it I could see why. Poorly written, poorly researched, full of errors of fact and logic (too many to remember now 6 months after reading the book). The title is memorable but perhaps better suited to a B grade horror flick. The publisher was embarassed, I am sure. The author appears to have been swept away in his own world and is probably busy today muttering in some alley-way about lack of coins, and the coming end of the world due to shortage of such. Apparently there are still some 2nd hand copies available. It's a buyer's market, I would say...
Rating:
Summary: Don't bother with this sadly confused crackpot
Review: Michael Rowbotham's "Grip of Death" rails against debt, banks, trade, large multinationals and exploitation of the third world. His prose is dense, repetitive, and full of absurd hyperbole. The title of the book, for example, "The Grip of Death" relates to the arrangement the author believes a person enters into in borrowing money for a home loan, based on the medieval origins of the word 'mortgage'. He wails on and on about how ordinary people do not really own their homes. He ignores the fact that for all practical purposes home owners do own their home (and can enjoy all the benefits of ownership), despite a bank retaining a security interest to protect repayment of the outstanding debt. The book is full of false assertions and factual errors. He confuses the creation of credit by banks with the subsequent creation of 'money' (as broadly defined) as borrowers or people they have transacted with redeposit in bank accounts. He also fails to understand even the basics of banking practice. Credit is not created out of thin air, but has to be backed by assets of the bank issuing the credit which can be withdrawn by the borrower. This kind confusion on the very basics of banking leads him into all sorts of paranoid mental twists and turns. He winds himself into a frenzy of delusional fears about how the banking system is behind the degradation of product quality (eg kettles used to last for much longer!) and trade warfare. Ultimately (compounding all his other errors) he fails to understand that finacial institutions employ ordianary people, have ordinary people as shareholders, customers and suppliers. They are not somehow outside 'the system'. The returns that financial institutions make (not very good in the last few years, pretty good the few years before that) feed back into the rest of the economy and are enjoyed by their shareholders, employees and the taxpayers. This book is a classic example of Alexander Pope's saying: 'a little learning is a dangerous thing'. In the hands of an earnest reader without much background in basic economics or pracical busininess experience this error-ridden, and scare-mongering book could be quite disturbing. It is so poorly written, however, most people will not waste their time on it.
Rating:
Summary: Confused conspiracy theories about evil banks
Review: The Grip of Death is a long and rambling book full of repetition. Its main points are that banks are bad, the world has too much debt, and that this has led to some destructive consequences. Unfortunately, the author does not understand banking practice, even at its simplest level. He thinks banks can - hey presto! - create money out of nothing when they make loans. He doesn't understand that it is actually depositors' money that is lent out, limiting the amount that any bank can lend! He also makes a huge point about the limited amount of cash (notes and coins) circulating in the economy and seems to think that this is some kind of banking conspiracy to enslave people into debt. There is actually a much simpler explanation: people prefer to keep their money in savings accounts where they can easily access it via (say) an ATM rather than carry it around in notes and coins. He concocts numerous conspiracy theories that people who are prepared to wade through the turgid and repetitve prose will uncover: banks force firms to make low quality goods, banks force unnecessary trade, currency dealers mysteriously lose money (to whom is never explained?) making trade a less-than zero-sum-game, etc You get the feeling with this book that the author has started with a really simple idea: banks are evil. He has then concocted as many conspiracy theories as he can around that idea. Unfortunately it does not hang together and he does not do his cause any justice with exaggeration, misstatement of facts, missunderstanding of banking practice, and endless repetition in his text. For anyone but die-hard conspiracy readers who want to deliberately further their own misunderstanding, buyers would waste their money on this book!
Rating:
Summary: Worth reading
Review: This book proceeds from a number of basic misunderstandings, which are then amplified by speculation and exaggeration. The statistics quoted give the reader the feel that there is some scholarship involved - but this book would not have passed undergraduate peer review. Sad for the publishers, sad for the author. Exciting for some readers who think they have discovered a new economic tract, but this is twaddle of the lowest order - full of first-year undergraduate errors.
Rating:
Summary: the detractors can't back up their claims
Review: You'll notice that people either love it or hate it. Please also notice that the detractors don't offer any summary to rebuke the book's basic thesis. Monetary reformists disagree with allowing banks to control money by the creation of money within the fractional reserve banking pyramid of "credit" (read DEBT). The debts of governments never decrease. Reduction of government debt actually hurts the economy (if you consider lack of growth to be a negative). Multiply the average per capita income of the U.S. by the popuplation of the U.S. and you'll yield a rough estimate of the amount of money in circulation (notice I said in circulation, not sent off to Swiss bank accounts). Guess what that number is always approximately equal to? It equals the debt of the U.S. government, about $6.4 trillion as I write this - a debt owed mainly to the financial establishment, the "elites" of the world who live off usury. How do the people who hate this book explain such facts? They don't. They can't explain the creation of money because they just don't get it. They are defenders of the status quo. They want us to believe that our money is honest so the privileged can retain the appearance of having earned their respected positions. I don't think Rowbotham wants to abolish money. He's only asking for a more genuine and democratic monetary system. Let governments create money for themselves - no borrowing from the rich money that can never be paid back. Conservatives shout and wail that such a method would cause inflation. SO! Inflation happens in the current system. If you create more money, all vendors will raise their prices to try to scoop up those new dollars in circulation. The problem is that the wealthy control that very creation by fractional reserve banking - lending out more money than they really have to lend, which they are able to do because money is not a physical thing, but instead just numbers on ledgers. If you don't see a problem there, you've simply been duped by years of believing that banks are somehow honest institutions...
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