Plot Summary
Spoiler Warning!
This page is chock full of spoilers of the plot and story line in The Money Suckers.
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The Money Suckers is the story of a wealthy New York banker named Justin Knight who lives with his 14-year-old daughter, Michaela, on a large estate on the shore of Long Island Sound. His daughter's tutor, Elizabeth Kohn (who goes by the name Lizzie), presents Justin with proof of a conspiracy to use the financial crisis to defraud the country. The proof comes in three forms:
- A clandestinely-recorded video of a top-level conference in which the financial powers-that-be tacitly admit the entire crisis was anticipated and planned. Participants in the conference include the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and the CEO of Justin's bank, Hanover-Rush, who is also Justin's blood uncle. Hanover-Rush is the largest bank in the country and one of the largest in the world.
- A deposition from a Hollywood producer who befriended a wealthy banker wanting to recruit him into the Committee for International Consolidation, an old foreign policy think tank dedicated to establishing a New World Order.
- Testimony that Justin's late wife, Amanda, who died in a car crash six years earlier, was actually murdered in order to cover up a secret government program to provide financial assistance to foreign governments and organizations with possible terrorist connections.
Hanover-Rush gets wind of the fact that Justin possesses this video. Anxious to gain custody of it and bury it to prevent the public from seeing its contents, the bank kidnaps Justin's daughter, Michaela, in order to apply pressure to Justin to release the video to the bank's security department. The bank uses its political connections to induce the President of the United States to order the FBI to recover the video on the bank's behalf while also ordering the FBI not to investigate the kidnapping.
The FBI end up helping to recover Michaela anyway, even though the President has ordered them not to pursue charges against the kidnappers. At the moment of her joyful unification with her father, an unseen assassin shoots Justin in the chest, while accomplices kidnap Michaela again, along with her tutor. Fortunately for Justin, Lizzie had earlier convinced him to wear a bullet-proof vest under his shirt, thus saving his life.
Meanwhile, an organization known as the Agorist Underground (AU), which seeks systemic monetary reform, arranges a rescue for Michaela and Lizzie and takes them into hiding. When Justin is released from the hospital, he and an FBI agent named Catherine Regan make arrangements to go underground in order to reunite the family.
Along the way, Justin discovers that one of his top customers, John Holloway of Holloway Industries, a major defense contractor that Justin helped become a publicly traded company, has been forced by a government entity known as Protector to funnel money to shady offshore companies, mirroring the experience that Justin's late wife was killed for discovering within the Hanover-Rush bank.
Once under the AU's protection, Justin greets an old banking competitor named Paul Regan, who mysteriously disappeared a few months ago when federal regulators took over his bank. Paul now runs an underground bank known as the First Agorist Bank. Paul Regan is Catherine Regan's father, so the scene creates a shocking reunion for Catherine, who previously believed her father had suicided by drowning himself at sea.
Justin and Paul end up agreeing to speak on the AU's behalf before a live national TV audience to expose the corruption they each have discovered in the course of the story. The broadcast takes place in a secret, underground location, but Hanover-Rush's security department discovered its location (the old Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, NY), and now the FBI and the New York Police Department have surrounded the old stadium and threaten to raid the underground facility.
Also included in the broadcast by a creative reporter who stars in the broadcast are Justin's uncle, the Treasury Secretary, and the chairman of the Federal Reserve. The broadcast becomes the opportunity for a spirited argument about whether or not the financial powers that be orchestrated the financial crisis and whether or not the government is involved in secretly financing terrorism.
During the broadcast, representatives of Hanover-Rush's security team who previously infiltrated the underground operation attempt a hit on Justin and Paul in front of the live studio audience watching the broadcast up close. The audience consists largely of AU members who pull out an arsenal of handguns on live TV in order to defeat the efforts of the would-be assassins. Once the FBI and the NYPD get wind of all this illegal handgun activity, they ratchet up their efforts to break into and raid the facility.
The AU suspends the broadcast in mid-stream (although all the most important information has already been disseminated to the nationwide viewing audience of 50 million) and begins an evacuation operation. Through careful execution of their plan and some creative negotiations with the cops, they manage to stall the raid long enough to get everyone inside the facility out through a secret tunnel that goes under the Harlem River. Once in Harlem, all the “wanted” people get spirited away to hidden locations throughout New York City. By the time SWAT teams successfully penetrate the facility, they find it deserted.
After the failed raid attempt, discussion of it dominates the airwaves. The politicians, financial experts, and TV pundits denounce the “conspiracy theories” presented by Justin and Paul. However, a grassroots effort to oppose the system starts to appear in the form of “tea parties” and marches.
The story ends with Paul and Justin attempting to build the underground banking company Paul started, with the aim of introducing a 100% reserve, gold-and-silver driven alternative, underground monetary system. Justin also asks Lizzie to marry him.
Throughout the novel, the basic concepts of legalized fraud and debt-based money are presented to the reader through the eyes of Michaela, who is learning about her father's business from her tutor. These concepts develop in a discussion among Justin, Lizzie, and Catherine when the FBI decides to help locate Michaela. The issues get full summary and come to a head during the nationally televised broadcast.
