Author Govert SchullerPosted on Categories Monetary Reform Dear friends of the monetary reform cause,
Last April 25 Stephen Zarlenga, the founder and director of the American Monetary Institute, passed away at his residence in Palatine, Illinois. He was cremated in a private ceremony at Elegy Cremation and Memorial Services, Arlington Heights, Illinois. His friends are organizing a memorial event, details of which are not yet known.
Stephen, a native of Chicago where he was born in 1941, was an insightful researcher of the history and mechanism of money and banking and he was a tireless crusader for monetary reform. In 1996 he established the non-profit charitable trust The American Monetary Institute and in 2002 he published his 700-page study The Lost Science of Money: The Mythology of Money – The Story of Power, which will have to be ranked as one of the classics in its field.
He encapsulated his research in one perceptive phrase: “Over time, whoever controls the money system, controls the nation”.
In 2004 Stephen organized the first AMI Monetary Reform Conference, which became a yearly successful event in which many academic experts, community activists and otherwise interested persons participated. The 13th Annual Conference is slated to be held at the University Center of the Roosevelt University in Chicago on September 14 through 17.
He was also instrumental in formulating and promoting monetary reform legislation for the US Congress to adopt. Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich from Ohio introduced in 2010 the National Employment Emergency Defense Act (Need Act), which was based on an earlier version developed by Stephen, the American Monetary Act.
With Stephen’s passing the American monetary reform movement lost its most prominent and influential member and he will be sorely missed. Some big shoes are to be filled because his cause is our cause and should be humanity’s concern, because we believe that well-thought-out monetary reform legislation can have profound transformative effects on our globalized world as it can democratically redirect the power of money creation towards the formation of a more just and equitable society.
If you like you can sign his memorial guest book here.