Gather 'round, Children, Here's How to Heal a Wounded Economy

Here is a link to my 41st column on Quartz: “Gather round, children, here’s how to heal a wounded economy." It could also be called "Electronic Money: The Coloring Book.”

Thanks are due to Donna D'Souza for her help in the cause of healing the economy, starting with education about electronic money.  

In case there are any problems with the SoundCloud links in the Quartz column, here is the audio of me reading the story aloud and the audio of me singing the operatic ballad that has the words of the story as the lyrics.

Since I began writing about electronic money, many people have told me that the biggest issues with serious negative (nominal) interest rates and the subordination of paper currency to electronic money needed to make them possible are political issues. I agree. I have thought that the way to change the politics of negative interest rates is to keep explaining them, from many different angles. This is the children’s storybook angle.

I think our storybook/coloring book works as a children’s story. There is an attempt to solve a problem that fails, then there is a twist that solves the problem from an unexpected direction–using a seeming curse that is actually a blessing. See what you think.

Reactions

Greg Mankiw writes on his blog:

If my favorite textbook hasn’t simplified things enough for you…

My friend and former student Miles Kimball takes a stab at explaining some basic macroeconomics through the vehicle of a child’s storybook.

Gerald Seib and David Wessel, in the Wall Street Journal, write:

University of Michigan economist Miles Kimball posts a downloadable coloring book and colored-in storybook to explain his simplified version of how the macro-economy and monetary policy work. [Quartz]