Some people will wonder why I decided to write this book as fiction rather than non-fiction. Here's why. If you say something that is the absolute, unvarnished truth, but it goes against what society considers to be common knowledge, people won't believe you, and they probably won't even listen to you. But take the exact same information, package it as fiction, don't claim it to be the absolute, unvarnished truth, and people will accept it much more easily.

Non-fiction books about the monetary system and banking rarely sell well. Most people don't read them. Focusing on the perils of fractional reserve banking has never successfully reached Mr. and Mrs. Average American. Fractional reserve banking has so much complexity and inscrutability that the average person just gives up.

I took a different approach. I decided not to emphasize fractional reserve banking at all. Instead I broke the whole issue down to two, very simple concepts:

1. Debt-Based Money
2. Legalized Fraud (which takes three main forms)
   1. Banks lending money that does not belong to them
   2. Banks lending money long-term using short-term money
   3. Banks or governments issuing paper and electronic money in greater quantities than they possess in commodity money (such as gold or silver)

I contend that these two concepts... debt-based money and legalized fraud... caused every financial crisis, panic, recession, and depression the United States has ever suffered, including the present crisis.

Banks have long loaned out money that does not belong to them. Checking, savings, CDs, and money market accounts belong to the customers, not to the banks. Lending them out without the express permission of the owners of that money is fraud. If you or I do that, we get arrested, while bankers get rewarded for the same behavior.

Similarly, banks have for generations loaned money long-term (mortgages, business loans, car loans, etc.) using short-term (checking, savings, CD, money market) funds. This kind of lending policy must eventually lead to disaster, and it always does in the long run.

Finally, both banks and governments have a long history of debasing their own money supplies. This is why we need to make it illegal to issue money that is not 100% backed by precious metals or other commodities that are easily convertible and retain their value over time.

That's the message I want to implant in every human consciousness in America. If we can get everyone talking about legalized fraud and debt-based money, I know the entire debate about the financial crisis, the monetary system, the Federal Reserve System, and how to fix the problem will change dramatically... in favor of the freedom movement.

I've often wondered how much more popular and influential Alex Jones could be if he presented his information as fictional stories rather than as factual conspiracies.

One of the reasons storytelling is so powerful is that it gets into peoples' minds. Stories influence every aspect of popular thinking. The most popular entertainers get paid well for telling the most popular stories.

Additionally, people believe much more in Harry Potter than they believe in real-life people. I shared this observation with a playright I know recently, and she confirmed the truth of it. "Of course it's true," she said, "because they feel like they know Harry Potter as a real person much more than they know someone they see on the news. They personally identify much more with Harry Potter."

Various political camps have strong fictional presences. Just glance at the New York Times best seller lists:

• The Doomsday Key, by James Rollins focuses on world hunger as it features the author's regular crew of characters seeking "to discover why an experimental agriculture site in Africa has been attacked and razed, killing everyone, including a U.S. senator's son."
• The Help, by Kathryn Stockett tells the story of a "budding social activist [who] begins to collect the stories of the black women on whom the country club sets relies."

Go back a few years, and you'll find:

• All Quiet On The Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque
• Animal Farm, by George Orwell
• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
• Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
• Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
• Gone With The Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
• Inherit The Wind, by Jerome Lawrence
• Major Barbara, by George Bernard Shaw
• 1984, by George Orwell
• Soylent Green, by Harry Harrison
• State of Fear, by Michael Crichton
• The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

and many more, all of which had their special issue or political point to emphasize. 

Television also has presented numerous series with political or issue-based themes, including:

• M.A.S.H.
• Roots
• South Park
• Spin City
• The West Wing

In the world of movies we find more political and issue messages with:

• Air Force One
• All The President's Men
• Amistad
• Braveheart
• The Candidate
• Dr. Strangelove (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)
• Happy Feet
• Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
• Network
• Saving Private Ryan
• Schindler's List
• 1776
• The American President
• The China Syndrome
• The Manchurian Candidate
• The Matrix
• The Patriot
• Wag The Dog

There are many others, of course. But where is the freedom movement fiction? What fiction reaches the non-political masses and promotes the issues and positions we believe in? For the most part, it doesn't exist. Even the few pro-freedom authors who have managed to get themselves published have been relegated to relative obscurity. Probably the most famous are Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein, but Rand was dismissed by many because her political message was too heavy-handed, and Heinlein got pigeon-holed into the science fiction category. As for the rest, most people never heard of L. Neil Smith, J. Neil Shulman, Vernor Vinge, or Robert Anton Wilson, among others. Most never even reached the mainstream.

So not only do we need our own fiction, we need it to reach mainstream readers.

I made a conscious decision to not make my novel a primer on libertarian thought or a political manifesto. If we want to reach the mainstream audience, we need to do it slowly and carefully, one step at a time. Giving them the entire freedom message all at once will send most people into shock and scare away many others. Many other simply won't believe it because it sounds too fantastical. I believe it's very important to stand on principle. However, I'm against shoving principle down the throats of others.

So I did not write my novel as a rah-rah for liberty or as a finely researched tome on fractional reserve banking. Instead, I distilled my message down to a very simple form that everyone can appreciate and agree needs to change: the idea that legalized fraud needs to become illegal. The rest of the novel is pure entertainment for the average, non-freedom-movement reader. Hopefully, people in the freedom movement will also find a lot to like in the story, but ultimately they're not my main target audience. My main target is mainstream America.

Tom Brokaw once observed, "It's all storytelling, you know. That's what journalism is all about."

Aaron Sorkin, who created  The West Wing, reportedly said, "There's a great tradition in storytelling that's thousands of years old, telling stories about kings and their palaces, and that's really what I wanted to do."

Whoever tells the best stories, wins! Hollywood has known this fact for years. So have the most successful entertainers of all kinds: writers, filmmakers, television producers, actors, comedians, singers and songwriters. So does the news industry. Heck, we all know that much of what the major media passes off as news actually borders on fiction!

We need to tell better stories in the freedom movement. We need to capture the imagination of the American people... and ultimately we need to capture the imagination of the world. What governs the world of imagination? Good storytelling.

The Money Suckers is my initial attempt at telling an entertaining story, and I request your assistance in getting my story in print and in front of the mainstream audience.