Electronic-funds-transfer Books

Highway robbery--Rusch's book is unbelievably bad, even by casebook standards. This $100+ rag is less than one inch thick, yet costs more than most books having three times the amount of pages and ten times the amount of information (most of the book is white space). Rather than explain the law, the author merely refers you to the Code (which you must purchase separately)--gee, thanks! The hypos are not helpful and no explanations are given. You'll learn more about negotiable instruments and payment law by reading your bank statement than you will from reading this entire book. If your professor ordered this book,unless her name is Rusch, the only reason is because she didn't have a chance to thumb through it beforehand. Spend twenty minutes with it, and you'll see why--you'll never stray from the core class curriculum again. My professor actually apologizes after every assignment because this book is so utterly worthless. AVOID PAYING PERFECTLY GOOD MONEY FOR THIS BOOK AT ALL COSTS, even if that means you have to split the costs three ways and share it with other students--believe me, once you've taken the class, you'll never use this book again.

Mr. Warwick attempts to project his liberal social agenda into moneterism without much success. He's obviously bought off on the current government four horsemen: drug kinpins, terrorists, money launders and pedophiles (changing periodically when they no longer shock citizens into willingly surrendering their civil rights) without looking deeply into the subject, seeing an elimination of currency as a major part of the solution.

He ignores the causes of the problems: the unwise and unwarranted expansion of criminalizing vicitimless behavior, ignoring that one man's patriot (e.g., this country's Founding Fathers) are another's terrorists, the illicit asset seizure laws and redefintion of money laundering to include situations without any predicate crime. He minimizes the experience of recent generations, and a major reason for our Constitution's tilt toward limiting Federal power, that the greater the role of centralized government the greater the likelyhood of tyranny.

Mr. Warwick stresses that increased use of account-based electronic monetary instruments can lead to improved speed, cost and security in financial transactions and reductions in crime, but ignores that the present account-based systems are routinely and effectively used for the very purposes he seeks to prevent and that fully anonymous electronic cash could be even less expensive while protecting our civil liberties (but then again he sees those as bothersome and necessary casualties anyway).

One big commercial for Peachtree add-ons but does not go beyond the basics. Everything you find in the manuals or help files is rehashed here one more time. Why bother?

I can not recommend this book.