Ironwood Publications was founded in 1996 for the purpose of publishing high quality books on economics and government economic policies.We are especially proud to publish the books of Allen W. Smith, who has devoted much of his adult life to battling economic illiteracy and promoting economic education. His high school textbook, Understanding Economics, which was published by Random House in 1986, was one of the best high school economics textbooks ever published. It was used inmore than 600 schools nationwide, and it was rated the best high school economics textbook on the marketin an independent study conducted by Georgia State University. We believe that DEMYSTIFYING ECONOMICS, The Student-Friendly Textbook, will have the same success today as Understanding Economics did when it was published by Random House.This new alternative to the standard principles of economics textbook will give teachers of economics a lot more flexibility.We believe the book will find a place in many principles courses where instructors are looking for a book that covers most of the principles of the standard course in a student-friendly, non-technical format, and the book will be ideal for the general education and pre-principles courses.
Other Titles Published by Ironwood Publications Include:
DEMYSTIFYING ECONOMICS: The Book That Makes Economics Accessible to Everyone by Allen W. Smith, Ph.D., 1996
Perky The Penguin by Rose Mary Shepherd, 1996
The Alleged Budget Surplus, Social Security, and Voodoo Economics by Allen W. Smith, Ph.D., 2000
SOCIAL SECURITY: The Attempt To Kill Itby Allen W. Smith, Ph.D., 2005
DEMYSTIFYING ECONOMICS: Third Edition by Allen W. Smith, Ph.D., 2008
THE BIG LIE: How Our Government Hoodwinked The Public, Emptied the S.S. Trust Fund, and caused The Great Economic Collapse by Allen W. Smith, Ph.D., 2009
THE LOOTING OF SOCIAL SECURITY, New Release of the Book, “They” Didn’t Want You to Read, by Allen W. Smith, 2010
New release of: "the book they didn't want you to read!"
The Book “they” Didn’t Want You to Read
This book was first published in 2004 by a New York publisher.The early reviews hinted at just how explosive the book and its content would be.In the words of the Boston Globe, “If you… have the stomach for a truly demoralizing read—you may wish to take up “The Looting of Social Security: How the Government Is Draining America’s Retirement Account,” by Allen W. Smith….With dismal clarity, Smith lays out the step-by-step history of how a national pension plan was transformed into an outright shakedown of working people, a maneuver that began during Ronald Reagan’s administration.” The Washington Times, in its January 26, 2004 issue,carried a lengthy article, by Paul W. Robberson. Robberson wrote, “What about an author who stridently writes, ‘Fraud!Fraud!’ about the operation of the Social Security system…Allen W. Smith does just that in “The Looting of Social Security.”
Just a month later, on the morning of February 26, 2004, I appeared on CNBC, as one of two invited guests, to respond to Greenspan’s assault on Social Security on the previous day.I held my book in front of the camera and said, as forcefully as I could, “Alan Greenspan should be ashamed of himself for what he is not telling the American people.”
Several weeks later, “The Looting of Social Security” mysteriously disappeared from bookstores throughout the country, and Amazon.com listed the book as “unavailable,” at a time when I knew with certainty that thousands of copies of the book were setting in a warehouse.I was unable to get a satisfactory explanation from the publisher or anyone else.An employee at a Barnes and Noble bookstore tried to help me by checking their records.She said that the store had initially received eight copies of the book and that they had sold four copies “before the book was apparently recalled.”
I tried to get the publishing rights to the book reverted back to me so I could publish the book elsewhere, but my publisher refused to relinquish the rights.Three years passed, during which time my publisher was sold to another publishing company, before I was able to get the rights reverted back to me.I do not know who was responsible for making the book “unavailable,” but there were many individuals and organizations who did not want the contents of this book made public.
Remarkably, during the six years since “The Looting of Social Security” became unavailable, the story of the looting of the Social Security trust fund has still not been widely reported by the mainstream media.Readers will be just as shocked by the revelations of this book today, as they would have been if they had been given the opportunity to read the book six years ago.
One major journalist has come to see the Social Security scam clearly.He is Allan Sloan, Fortune’s Senior Editor at Large.In his August 10, 2010 Washington Post column, Allan Sloan quoted me and referred to my 2009 book, “THE BIG LIE: How Our Government Hoodwinked the Public, Emptied the Social Security Trust Fund and caused The Great Economic Collapse,”Once Sloan broke the ice, he was followed by other journalists.Excerpts from the articles of three of those writers appear below:
“Doesn’t the Social Security trust fund cover that? No, silly.All those years of surplus in Social Security were recorded in a book entry dubbed the “trust fund, but the non-marketable special Treasury bonds that make up the fund don’t represent any assets that can be cashed in to pay benefits.”--Eric Schurenberg from CBS Money Watch, August 19, 2010 “Your payroll taxes go into a bottomless hole.So where did all that FICA money go?Down the drain of federal spending on everything.It’s certainly not sitting in an account waiting to pay your retirement benefits.”—Terry Savage, Chicago Sun-Times, September 6, 2010
“For more than 25 years, while working people were told that they were paying extra taxes to ensure their retirement security, that surplus tax revenue was actually being siphoned off to run general government operations…In reality, the trust fund contains government IOUs that taxpayers today and tomorrow will have to redeem probably through paying higher taxes” –Jay Bookman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 7, 2010
The fact is that $2.54 trillion of the Social Security surplus revenue has been diverted from the Social Security program and used for whatever unscrupulous politicians chose to spend it on.None of this money was saved, or invested in anything.Money can be spent or saved. If it is saved, it can also be invested, but, if it is all spent, there is nothing left to invest.This $2.54 trillion Social Security heist by the United States government may well be the “fraud of the century!”
Allen W. Smith
October 10, 2010
Some Revelations of "THE BIG LIE"
The Social Security trust fund is empty. It contains no marketable U.S. Treasury bonds nor any other real assets. In the words of David Walker, former comptroller general of the GAO, the trust fund "Has nothing of real value to draw down."
The government will be unable to pay full Social Security benefits after 2016 without raising taxes or finding some other source of supplemental funding.
The national debt has risent from $1 trillion in 1981 to nearly $12 trillion today, and we are currently adding more than a trillion dollars to the debt per year.
The great economic collapse of 2008 started with the implosion of the American banking system, and then spread, like wildfire, throughout the entire global economy. What caused this colossal catastrophe? Answering that question is the purpose of this book. The collapse was not a natural disaster. It was manmade, and it should never have been allowed to happen. Reckless deficit spending by the federal government caused the national debt to skyrocket from only $1 trillion in 1981 to more than $11 trillion in 2009. During that same period, the government has borrowed, embezzled, or stolen every dollar of the approximately $2.4 trillion of Social Security surplus revenue that was supposed to have been saved and invested to fund the retirement of the baby-boomer generation. Another factor that contributed to the collapse was the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, a primary pillar of FDR s New Deal legislation that was designed to prevent a repeat of the 1930s financial collapse. When President Clinton signed into law the bill that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, on November 12, 1999, he opened the floodgates for mass mergers of companies in the financial industries. This action contributed to the massive mismanagement on Wall Street that ultimately led to the meltdown. Smith chronicles the events during the past 28 years that collectively made the collapse almost inevitable
About The Author
Allen W. Smith has devoted much of his adult life to battling economic illiteracy and promoting economic education. He taught economics to college students for 30 years before retiring as Professor of Economics at Eastern Illinois University in 1998 to become a full-time writer.Over the years, Smith has written numerous books in his effort to help readers understand economics and government economic policy. Understanding Inflation and Unemployment, Smith’s first book, became an alternate selection of Fortune Book Club when it was published in 1976.Understanding Economics, published by Random House in 1986, was used in more than 600 schools in 48 states.
In recent years, Smith has focused his research and writing on government finance and Social Security.He published The Alleged Budget Surplus, Social Security, and Voodoo Economics in 2000, The Looting of Social Security: How the Government is Draining America’s Retirement Account in 2004, and Social Security: The Attempt to Kill It in 2005.
Dr. Smith has discussed economics and social security on CNN, CNBC, CNNfn, andmore than 100 radio talk shows. He holds a B.S. in Education degree from Ball State University and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from Indiana University.
