Money as Debt

Paul Grignon's forty seven minute animation sets out to explain where money comes from using the simplest drawings it can: that banks create money in the act of lending, that the system therefore needs debt to keep growing, and that this makes it unsustainable over the long run. It spread fast online in 2006 and produced two sequels, in 2009 and 2011. The account does not match the one in economics textbooks. A review in Anthropology Today treated it as a fable that had caught on in activist circles, and wrote that it demonises banks and interest in particular. Grignon himself later conceded that his section on fractional reserve banking may have been misleading. What the film argues is the film's argument, not a settled finding.