The Collapse of The American Dream Explained in Animation
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended as an accessible animated primer on banking and the Fed, usually with the caveat that it is biased and dated.
What it is
A 30-minute animated film explaining how money, banking and the Federal Reserve work and arguing that the American economy is heading for collapse. It is opinionated and has a strong point of view.
Recommended by 5 HN commenters across 5 different months, 2014 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec Fuxy · 2014-12 · on “The world is not falling apart: The trend lines”
> Wealth Inequality - The gap is widening The US currency and most other currencies are working against the people and in favor of the bankers. Probably one of the best solutions that have presented themselves for this problem is bit-coin but since it is extremely volatile and still underused at the moment it is not ready yet. Here's [1] a simple youtube animation that explains it better than anything i have seen. [1]: [this video]
Strong rec Jerry2 · 2023-03 · on “Bank Failures Come in Waves”
Yes, that's how it works. There's this amazing animated movie from 2011 that explains how banking works and the history of banks: "The Collapse of The American Dream Explained in Animation" [1] It has almost 10 million views. [1] [this video]
Recommends icu · 2014-03 · on “Ask HN: What is really wrong with the US economy, really?”
There are several levels to what is wrong. I have dedicated the last 5 years to discovering what is going on so I will try my best to condense it down. In terms of a 'shorter' business cycle view (less than 10 year perspective) to what is wrong is that we are not in a recession but in a deleverage. We haven't had one of those since WW2 so most people don't know what it is and think it is a recession. A deleverage is a once in a 100 year massive transfer of wealth event. I have put resources on what a deleverage is at the end of this reply. The long term problem is that the Fed is a private bank. This means that the US Government and American citizens do not control the Fed. Forget the façade
Recommends unixhero · 2020-03 · on “Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?”
Any book on International Finance, to start. And then maybe a Banking 101 to understand how banking works. Then Macro Economics, to know how economics of markets and countries work. There's no quick fix to learning this stuff. However you might still want to; so take this biased Internet-clip with a grain of salt and enjoy: [this video]
Recommends normalaccess · 2025-01 · on “Fed leaves rates unchanged, drops reference to inflation 'progress'”
The fact that every dollar that is printed MUST be paid back to the Federal Reserve Bank with interest means that every dollar printed is worth less than it's face value. This is the original and primary source of inflation. All debt biassed currencies have this, not as a defect, but as a feature. If you own the bank you can do some money magic and get filthy rich. The Federal reserve Over the last 100 years the dollar has lost something like 96% of it's value. It's old and quite corny but this video gives the cliff notes on how the FED works [this video]