Work by American poet Ezra Pound on economics, with the usual handful of Pound's polyglot learning thrown in. This collection of essays was published in 1960, but written in the 20s, 30s and 40s, when the author was living in Fascist Italy and embracing Mussolini enthusiastically.
The major theme of the work is that usury is the cause of war and famine. Although Ezra Pound's anti-banking tendancies were often mixed with anti-Semitism, in this particular work, this is not explicitly stated, except in one essay where Pound compares Jewish culture unfavorably to Confucianism.
Although Ezra Pound is seen as one of the great stylists and founders of modernism, this work will be a little uneven both for readers of normal social studies or technical readers of economics. Although some great one liners are tossed off ("for a government to collect taxes is like the owner of a tin mine to collect old cans") he nowhere puts forward a systematic study of economics. He instead name checks Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Dante, Confucius and Mencius, who are all great thinkers, but trying to pull out a coherent system of thought from their quotes is difficult. In addition, much information is repeated from essay to essay, along with a great deal of ranting about the bankruptcy of American civilization under the usurocracy.
On the other hand, Ezra Pound is one of the great writers of the last century. Reading fragments of his work on a subject he was somewhat of an amatuer at will be much more rewarding then reading much better written and much more coherent books by alleged experts in many fields. | 
