Mint: The Cartoon History of Modern Financial Crises

by Carlos Torres, Ona Peña Senmarti (Illustrator), Jeremy Fisher (Translator)

I wanted to write a book about the paradoxes and the contradictions of our economic model. Because the economy is relevant to everybody, I thought the book should appeal to people who are unfamiliar with the subject. Then the idea of a cartoon came to my mind.Mint is an illustrated documentary covering the world’s economic and financial crises for nearly a century - from 1919 to 2009 to be precise. But it is also a reflection of what may happen in the near future, and probably in the distant future as well. As the reader will find out, the subprime crisis was not unique in its origins while the challenges presently faced by the euro zone recall those encountered by Britain in the 1920s.The near collapse of the financial system was seemingly solved by printing money and by running up debts to be paid by others. Anyone would want to solve their own financial problems in this way! As the complexity of a system increases, we would expect solutions to become more elaborate. Instead, they become too basic.What worries me most is that as time goes by, crises are often attributed to ordinary people's irrationality and to the 'madness of crowds'. Maybe we are naturally inclined to think that you can never make mistakes if you have knowledge and a formal education and that everything wrong that happens is always as a result of ignorance. I do not share this view. I hope that the pages that follow will show you that crises are in fact the after-effects of a false prosperity created by the best informed people.(Extracts from the Prologue)

225 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 21, 2011