The Oil Drum

For another take on the Wizard of Oz and money.

http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/tornadoswells.html

BTW, to give you another clue. In the Book, Dorthy's shoes were made out of Silver not Ruby.

[snip]

All it took at the end of the story to vanquish the all-powerful witch was a splash of cold water in the face. Interestingly, there is speculation that the original book was a political parable and that the witch represented the evil Standard Oil corporation (now Exxon) which, in 1900 when the book was written, was aligned with the Wall Street crooks of the time and the railroads to force landowners off their property by using the "humbug" of the gold (troy Oz) - backed dollar (emerald) standard to control the money supply in order to force farmers off their land and drive their competitors out of business.

The election of 1896 was all about a contest between "goldbugs" and "silverites" (In the book, Dorothy's all-powerful slippers were silver, not ruby). Silver was a readily available commodity at the time and could be freely coined, providing a liquid and accessible means of exchange that would free the "good people" of the heartland (the North and the South) from they tyranny of the industrial witches of the East and the West. Dorothy, the proxy for the average American, gets her silver shoes early on but doesn't know what to do with them so she must follow the gold to Washington ("follow the money," whispered Deep Throat to Woodward and Bernstein) where in the end, she discovers that the Wizard is nothing but a fraud, elevated to his office by happenstance and kept alive by deception, literally smoke and mirrors.