The yellow brick road (gold standard), the Scarecrow (farmers), the Tin Man (industrial workers), the Wicked Witch of the West (Cleveland banker J.D. Rockefeller) and the Wicked Witch of the East (NY banker J.P.Morgan), the Emerald City of Oz (greenback money), the illusory power of the Wizard in the capitol city (who monopolized power through deceit), even Dorothy’s silver slippers (changed to ruby slippers for the color movie version -symbols of Baum’s and Bryan’s belief that adding by “silver coin to gold coin would provide much needed money to a depression-strapped, 1890s America). Oz is a virtual forest of monetary reform symbolism, done by someone extremely well versed in the Populist monetary reform goals of the period (Baum was a newspaperman and author) – goals which have never changed – they are still valid today, they are needed now more than then.

We have no need of the banking Wizards in the City to create money. Our government can simply create money itself  if it ever regains the confidence to throw aside the Wizard’s curtain revealing the trickery of the bank-created-debt-money-system, as Presidents Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln did in their day.  Many more fascinating metaphors, historical allusions and solutions are revealed in the fascinating new video Secret of Oz.