The Money Sham is not just a theoretical exploration of "what money is." It is a political–economic history of how misunderstandings about money have shaped Britain's economic trajectory. Stephen Laughton reveals a persistent pattern in which flawed ideas about money have guided policy decisions across generations.

The book exposes a hidden continuity from Isaac Newton's monetary framework through to Thatcherism, New Labour, and Conservative austerity, to Labour 2024. The book details the UK Labour Party's reactive and inadequate response to free-market ideology over the decades. This response is echoed across western democracies. The ascendancy of Currency School ideas over those of the Banking School and the eventual triumph of neo-liberal economics has driven the most consequential policy mistakes, contributing to crises, stagnation, instability, and avoidable social and economic pressures.

At a moment when Britain has once again placed its hopes in a government at risk of repeating these errors, The Money Sham offers a clear account of the country's current crisis alongside a concrete, evidence-based programme for renewal, grounded in monetary realism, real-resource economics, and the practical realities of British institutions.



Stephen Laughton has had a non-linear if not eccentric career path, not inappropriate given the non-linear nature of realistic economics.

With a degree in Philosophy in 1972, he has been a teacher, a trade unionist and later an employer, while also a playwright and cross-cultural language awareness trainer. He gained a Masters in Economics in 2018. In 2023 he helped Mosler with an update in his Soft Currency Economics.

In the 1980s and 90s he was a member of the Full Employment Forum, and the Labour Party Economic Policy Group, founded by John Mills, Bryan Gould and Austin Mitchell. He edited Mills' Britain's Achilles Heel. He was the political education officer for his Constituency Labour Parties.

As owner of two limited companies, his knowledge of double-entry book keeping, which is absent from academic economics, helped him to understand money.

In 2024 he presented at the first UK MMT conference along with Bill Mitchell, Warren Mosler and Stephanie Kelton.

He remains a philosophical economist, who believes current economic wisdom is deeply flawed and that centrist politicians who follow it are paving the way for their own demise.