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Help us launch our graphic novel series - CRASH, BOOM, POP! - to help lay a good foundation in economics. We want to expose how money and economics actually work, without the complicated rhetoric. Everyday questions that befuddle our brains like: How is money created? Why do housing prices keep rising? Why are interest rates at all time lows (even if your credit card interest may not be)? What’s the purpose of austerity? Why do central banks, like the Federal Reserve, continue printing more currency?These are baffling questions for many...including actual economists! Yes, that’s right. Much of what economists actually believe - and teach in their incredibly boring textbooks - is wrong.
Take the question of how money is created. Ever heard of the “Money Multiplier”? It’s so mainstream that in 2009, President Obama used it in a speech to justify giving the banks a bailout instead of families and businesses:
“there are a lot of Americans who understandably think that government money would be better spent going directly to families and businesses instead of banks – ‘where’s our bailout?,’ they ask”...the truth is that a dollar of capital in a bank can actually result in eight or ten dollars of loans to families and businesses, a multiplier effect that can ultimately lead to a faster pace of economic growth."Great idea...only it’s wrong. That’s not how money is really created. The Bank of England recently admitted as much:
"This description of how money is created differs from the story found in some economics textbooks. For instance, in normal times, the central bank does not in practice choose the amount of money in circulation. Nor is central bank money ‘multiplied up’ into more loans and deposits. Rather, the Bank of England implements monetary policy – which is set to be consistent with low and stable inflation – by setting the interest rate on central bank reserves (‘Bank Rate’). This then influences a range of interest rates – including those on bank loans – and, in turn, the aggregate amount of spending in the economy." http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publi.../2014/051.aspx
Confused? So were we. Then we read some books that cut through the confusion: Steve Keen’s “Debunking Economics”, Ann Pettifor’s "Just Money - How to Break the Despotic Power of Finance" and Ha-Joon Chang's "23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism", just to name a few.
As a team with a background in finance, education and economics, we did our best to digest all of this information for you. Now we want to share what we’ve learned.
» THE DETAILS
CRASH, BOOM, POP! Volume 1: MONEY will be a perfect bound graphic novel. The final size will be 6.75” x 10.5” (17.15 cm x 26.67 cm) with at least 96 full color pages printed on thick, high quality paper. Our goal is to print at least 1000 copies.
» WHO ARE WE?
MEET THE TEAM: Comic creators and founders of 7 Robots indie publisher Miguel Guerra and Suzy Dias, and writer Genevieve Tran (watch her TED Talk on financial literacy for the next generation).
MEET STEVE KEEN: Our mentor and muse is Professor Steve Keen, Head of the School of Economics, Politics and History at Kingston University London, founder of the Minsky open source economic simulator (which was successfully funded on Kickstarter), and author of the bestselling, “Debunking Economics”.
He is also the winner of the 2010 Revere Award of Economics from the Real-World Economic Review for being the economist, "who first and most clearly anticipated and gave public warning of the Global Financial Collapse and whose work is most likely to prevent another GFC in the future."
To paraphrase Groucho Marx, economics is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?
https://www.startjoin.com/crashboompop
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