Quote:
Originally Posted by Mason
Welcome to the forums, can't wait to hear more about your novel  |
Hi Mason,
Thank you (and the others) for your kind welcome. I actually came to MobileRead because I wanted to learn about the technical issues involved in publishing for e-readers. Still, I'm happy to tell you whatever you want to know about my book.
I wrote my novel as an entertaining story because when people enjoy the story, it's much easier to handle the concepts involved. Various non-fiction books have been written on the subject since Sept./Oct. 2008, but financial non-fiction is extremely boring to read (even for me). So I invented a tale that blends the undiscussed root causes of the crisis into a fictional story of conspiracy and government ties to terrorism.
The story includes (among other things) a kidnapping, a murder attempt, a wild chase scene, and an underground movement called the Agorist Underground (or "AU" for short... an "agorist" is a classical Greek word that means "marketplace") whose goal is major monetary system reform. The AU ends up rescuing the protagonists and staging a nationally-televised program challenging the "official" story about the roots of the financial crisis. The program takes the form of a debate between the top financial leaders and spokesmen for the AU.
I also went out of my way to make my characters as real as I could, people dealing with extraordinary circumstances, yet displaying their own foibles and humanity in the process. I spend a significant amount of time in the novel focusing on their interpersonal relationships, particularly among the three main protagonists.
My motivation in writing the novel comes from the fact that most people only know about the financial crisis what the newscasters and reporters tell them. An awful lot of the information put out by the talking heads, the politicians, the bureaucrats, and the financial experts is misleading at best.
For instance, the claim that the crisis was caused by sub-prime mortgages is way off the mark. Certainly, sub-primes were the symptom that brought the whole crisis to light, and the banks suffered because of them. However, sub-prime mortgages were issued in such large numbers because the legal, regulatory, and financial system surrounding banking encourages such behavior, not merely because of banker greed.
Today, the financial and political leaders are reporting that the economies of the U.S. and the world are beginning to pull out of the recession. This is also very misleading, because we're not anywhere near done with mortgage foreclosures. 2008 was a peak year, but we've known since 2007 or even before that there would be a second peak year for foreclosures: 2011. 2009 was expected to be a "lull" year (by those who pay attention to these things), and indeed it is playing out that way. But mortgage foreclosures will definitely increase in 2010 and peak again in 2011. Do the newsies, the politicos, and the bureaucrats report this fact? Of course not.
Further, mortgage failures are increasing even faster for prime mortgages. In fact, most recently, the rate of sub-prime mortgage foreclosures declined significantly, while prime mortgage types, previously thought to be "safe" have increased in foreclosure activity dramatically.
This crisis, unfortunately, is far from over.
The bigger question is: what really caused the crisis, if not sub-prime mortgages? The answer is that the monetary system of all countries is rigged, both in the U.S. and abroad, in such a way as to encourage risky lending practices. Indeed, the money supply itself depends on lending for its growth and survival!
Most people don't realize that all modern, major currencies are debt-based. By this I mean that every single dollar, euro, yen, etc. are issued by making a loan. I realize that sounds crazy, but it's true. It also has some very negative consequences that go along with such a system, consequences which include the current financial crisis.
I've probably rambled on more than you were asking for, so forgive me.