{"id":83764,"date":"2022-11-14T19:01:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-14T23:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=83764"},"modified":"2022-11-22T12:17:18","modified_gmt":"2022-11-22T16:17:18","slug":"abolishing-the-federal-reserve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/","title":{"rendered":"Abolishing the Federal Reserve: A Proposed 2-Step Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If we were to abolish the Federal Reserve, how should we go about it? What are some alternatives to the Fed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edward Griffin believes the Fed destabilizes the economy and encourages banks to engage in fraudulent practices that harm the public and benefit the elite. In his book, <em>The Creature from Jekyll Island<\/em>, he identifies four major <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/why-is-the-federal-reserve-bad\/\">problems with the Fed<\/a> and insists that it should be abolished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read more to learn Griffin&#8217;s proposed two-step strategy to abolish the Federal Reserve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-abolishing-the-federal-reserve\">Abolishing the Federal Reserve<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Griffin concedes that simply repealing the law that created the Fed and shutting down the system would be disastrous for the U.S. economy. This is because the economy runs on currency issued by the Fed. If all that currency disappeared, the economy couldn\u2019t function. So, Griffin proposes a sequence of actions that would successfully abolish the Federal Reserve System and correct the problems he identifies.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For one thing, since the Fed facilitates government borrowing, Griffin sees the national debt as a problem that needs to be addressed prior to closing it. He proposes having the Fed issue enough money to buy up all the treasury bonds that it doesn\u2019t already own, effectively paying off the national debt with newly issued money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, the Fed is also responsible for managing America\u2019s fiat currency, so, before we can abolish the Fed, we need to abandon fiat currency. Griffin proposes phasing out fiat dollars in favor of a new currency backed by precious metals. We\u2019ll call that new currency \u201cprecious metal dollars,\u201d or PMDs.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once fiat dollars are fully phased out, the Fed can be shut down. Without the regulation and safeguards that it provided, some banks will undoubtedly fail. But others will adjust their business practices to manage risk more conservatively, abandoning practices like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/fractional-reserve-lending\/\">fractional lending<\/a>. This shift toward better banking practices among the surviving banks will ultimately make the economy more stable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong>An Alternative Solution: The Bitcoin Standard<\/strong><br><br>Cryptocurrency may offer an alternative approach to abolishing the Fed, or at least solving the problems that it creates, according to Griffin. In <em>The Bitcoin Standard<\/em>, economics professor Saifedean Ammous criticizes fiat currency and the central banks that issue it for many of the same reasons that Griffin criticizes the Federal Reserve, including inflation, wasteful <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/what-should-the-government-spend-money-on\/\">government spending<\/a> (especially on wars), and artificially low interest rates that destabilize the economy by enticing businesses to borrow money for bad ventures.<br><br>But, rather than trying to abolish fiat currency by abolishing central banks, Ammous suggests that using bitcoin as an international monetary standard could lead to the abolition of fiat currency through the natural operation of market forces.<br><br>Bitcoin\u2014and currencies fully backed by bitcoin\u2014wouldn\u2019t suffer from the problems of fiat currency because, as Ammous explains, Bitcoin is impossible for any government to control. This, in turn, is because of its decentralized network structure, which is distributed across many independent parties in many countries. And it\u2019s equally impossible for anyone to arbitrarily issue more bitcoin like governments issue fiat currency, so the supply of bitcoin is stable\u2014much like the supply of precious metals.<br><br>In Ammous\u2019s solution, the Federal Reserve wouldn\u2019t necessarily need to be abolished. Its power over the economy would be greatly diminished, and some of its functions might become increasingly irrelevant. But it might be able to serve a more useful function by holding a large reserve of bitcoin (similar to its current gold reserves) and buying and selling bitcoin from other central banks to smooth out fluctuations in the demand for bitcoins.<br><br>Ammous doesn\u2019t address the problem of the national debt explicitly, but if market forces drove the US economy to use primarily bitcoin-backed dollars, the demand for US fiat dollars would decrease, and with it the value of fiat dollars. Because the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/growth-of-us-national-debt\/\">US national debt<\/a> is owed in fiat dollars, that would mean the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/real-value-paper-value-technological-revolutions\/\">real value<\/a> of the debt would also diminish, making it easier to pay off and less of a problem in the meantime.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-exercise-what-would-you-do-if-the-fed-were-abolished\">Exercise: What Would You Do if the Fed Were Abolished?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Imagine that the United States decided to implement Griffin\u2019s plan for abolishing the Federal Reserve. In this exercise, you\u2019ll have a chance to contemplate how that might affect you personally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>As the Fed pays off the national debt, there\u2019s going to be far more dollars in circulation all at once, causing a sudden surge of inflation, or rather devaluation of the fiat US dollar. What do you think you would do to reduce your vulnerability to inflation or devaluation at that time?<\/li><li>Once the Fed closes down, no longer regulating banks or insuring deposits, some banks will likely fail, and their depositors will likely lose their savings. How would you manage this risk?<\/li><li>Now that you\u2019ve had a chance to think through some of the issues involved in implementing Griffin\u2019s plan, do you support or oppose this plan for abolishing the Fed? Why or why not?<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If we were to abolish the Federal Reserve, how should we go about it? What are some alternatives to the Fed? Edward Griffin believes the Fed destabilizes the economy and encourages banks to engage in fraudulent practices that harm the public and benefit the elite. In his book, The Creature from Jekyll Island, he identifies four major problems with the Fed and insists that it should be abolished. Read more to learn Griffin&#8217;s proposed two-step strategy to abolish the Federal Reserve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":83751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,275],"tags":[800],"class_list":["post-83764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics","category-politics","tag-the-creature-from-jekyll-island","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Abolishing the Federal Reserve: A Proposed 2-Step Strategy - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Edward Griffin says the Fed is a detriment to the economy and it needs to go. Here&#039;s his proposed strategy to abolish the Federal Reserve.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Abolishing the Federal Reserve: A Proposed 2-Step Strategy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Edward Griffin says the Fed is a detriment to the economy and it needs to go. Here&#039;s his proposed strategy to abolish the Federal Reserve.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-11-14T23:01:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-11-22T16:17:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/federal-reserve-building.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elizabeth Whitworth\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elizabeth Whitworth\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Elizabeth Whitworth\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d2928cf6c11a69ced1491d6a5b74fb13\"},\"headline\":\"Abolishing the Federal Reserve: A Proposed 2-Step Strategy\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-11-14T23:01:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-11-22T16:17:18+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/\"},\"wordCount\":844,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/federal-reserve-building.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"The Creature From Jekyll Island\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Economics\",\"Politics\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/\",\"name\":\"Abolishing the Federal Reserve: A Proposed 2-Step Strategy - Shortform Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/federal-reserve-building.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-11-14T23:01:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-11-22T16:17:18+00:00\",\"description\":\"Edward Griffin says the Fed is a detriment to the economy and it needs to go. Here's his proposed strategy to abolish the Federal Reserve.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/federal-reserve-building.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/federal-reserve-building.jpg\",\"width\":1200,\"height\":630},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Abolishing the Federal Reserve: A Proposed 2-Step Strategy\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"Shortform Books\",\"description\":\"The World&#039;s Best Book Summaries\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"Shortform Books\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/logo-equilateral-with-text-no-bg.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/logo-equilateral-with-text-no-bg.png\",\"width\":500,\"height\":74,\"caption\":\"Shortform Books\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"}},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d2928cf6c11a69ced1491d6a5b74fb13\",\"name\":\"Elizabeth Whitworth\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/1fff9d65a52ac4340660218e7b63ee5e365cf08e7aa7adff79a0142cd4b96f84?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/1fff9d65a52ac4340660218e7b63ee5e365cf08e7aa7adff79a0142cd4b96f84?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Elizabeth Whitworth\"},\"description\":\"Elizabeth has a lifelong love of books. She devours nonfiction, especially in the areas of history, theology, and philosophy. A switch to audiobooks has kindled her enjoyment of well-narrated fiction, particularly Victorian and early 20th-century works. She appreciates idea-driven books\u2014and a classic murder mystery now and then. Elizabeth has a Substack and is writing a book about what the Bible says about death and hell.\",\"sameAs\":[\"rina@shortform.com\"],\"award\":[\"Contributions to joint task force efforts (FBI)\",\"Contributions to Special Operations Division (DOJ & DEA)\",\"Efforts to fight the war on drugs (NSA)\",\"Contributions to Operation Storm Front (US Customs Service)\"],\"knowsAbout\":[\"History\",\"Theology\",\"Government\"],\"jobTitle\":\"Senior SEO Writer\",\"worksFor\":\"Shortform\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/author\/elizabeth\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Abolishing the Federal Reserve: A Proposed 2-Step Strategy - Shortform Books","description":"Edward Griffin says the Fed is a detriment to the economy and it needs to go. Here's his proposed strategy to abolish the Federal Reserve.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Abolishing the Federal Reserve: A Proposed 2-Step Strategy","og_description":"Edward Griffin says the Fed is a detriment to the economy and it needs to go. Here's his proposed strategy to abolish the Federal Reserve.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/","og_site_name":"Shortform Books","article_published_time":"2022-11-14T23:01:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2022-11-22T16:17:18+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1200,"height":630,"url":"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/federal-reserve-building.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Elizabeth Whitworth","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Elizabeth Whitworth","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/"},"author":{"name":"Elizabeth Whitworth","@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d2928cf6c11a69ced1491d6a5b74fb13"},"headline":"Abolishing the Federal Reserve: A Proposed 2-Step Strategy","datePublished":"2022-11-14T23:01:00+00:00","dateModified":"2022-11-22T16:17:18+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/"},"wordCount":844,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/federal-reserve-building.jpg","keywords":["The Creature From Jekyll Island"],"articleSection":["Economics","Politics"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/","url":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/","name":"Abolishing the Federal Reserve: A Proposed 2-Step Strategy - Shortform Books","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/federal-reserve-building.jpg","datePublished":"2022-11-14T23:01:00+00:00","dateModified":"2022-11-22T16:17:18+00:00","description":"Edward Griffin says the Fed is a detriment to the economy and it needs to go. Here's his proposed strategy to abolish the Federal Reserve.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/federal-reserve-building.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/federal-reserve-building.jpg","width":1200,"height":630},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/abolishing-the-federal-reserve\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Abolishing the Federal Reserve: A Proposed 2-Step Strategy"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/","name":"Shortform Books","description":"The World&#039;s Best Book Summaries","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization","name":"Shortform Books","url":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/logo-equilateral-with-text-no-bg.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/logo-equilateral-with-text-no-bg.png","width":500,"height":74,"caption":"Shortform Books"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"}},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d2928cf6c11a69ced1491d6a5b74fb13","name":"Elizabeth Whitworth","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/1fff9d65a52ac4340660218e7b63ee5e365cf08e7aa7adff79a0142cd4b96f84?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/1fff9d65a52ac4340660218e7b63ee5e365cf08e7aa7adff79a0142cd4b96f84?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Elizabeth Whitworth"},"description":"Elizabeth has a lifelong love of books. She devours nonfiction, especially in the areas of history, theology, and philosophy. A switch to audiobooks has kindled her enjoyment of well-narrated fiction, particularly Victorian and early 20th-century works. She appreciates idea-driven books\u2014and a classic murder mystery now and then. Elizabeth has a Substack and is writing a book about what the Bible says about death and hell.","sameAs":["rina@shortform.com"],"award":["Contributions to joint task force efforts (FBI)","Contributions to Special Operations Division (DOJ & DEA)","Efforts to fight the war on drugs (NSA)","Contributions to Operation Storm Front (US Customs Service)"],"knowsAbout":["History","Theology","Government"],"jobTitle":"Senior SEO Writer","worksFor":"Shortform","url":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/author\/elizabeth\/"}]}},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/federal-reserve-building.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83764"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83773,"href":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83764\/revisions\/83773"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}