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How to Create a Financial Crisis is a conversation via text messaging with Léon Courville, professor of economics and former President and Chief Operating Officer of National Bank of Canada, who invites users to create a financial crisis in order to understand its theoretical underpinnings and, more importantly, the human behaviour behind it. The experience is optimized for mobile phones and also accessible on tablets and computers. Each user engages in a 20- to 25-minute conversation with the professor, who unpacks five concepts that are vital to understanding the forces at work in the modern financial system. Through these exchanges, the user meets key players—including consumers, bankers, investors, politicians, and oligarchs—and explores the nature of imbalances within the compensation system, practices of debt securitization, flaws in financial regulations, the concentration of influential power (the “too big to fail” syndrome), and the usurpation of democratic systems by financial oligarchies.

A conversation via text messaging about a global financial crisis.

How to Create a Financial Crisis is a conversation via text messaging with Léon Courville, professor of economics and former President and Chief Operating Officer of National Bank of Canada, who invites users to create a financial crisis in order to understand its theoretical underpinnings and, more importantly, the human behaviour behind it. The experience is optimized for mobile phones and also accessible on tablets and computers. Each user engages in a 20- to 25-minute conversation with the professor, who unpacks five concepts that are vital to understanding the forces at work in the modern financial system. Through these exchanges, the user meets key players—including consumers, bankers, investors, politicians, and oligarchs—and explores the nature of imbalances within the compensation system, practices of debt securitization, flaws in financial regulations, the concentration of influential power (the “too big to fail” syndrome), and the usurpation of democratic systems by financial oligarchies.

Economics is presented as a pure science, although it is primarily governed by human behaviour, decisions and actions, and therefore fundamentally fallible. Nevertheless, humans have unshakable faith in money and financial markets, despite recurring financial crises. Perhaps more thought should be given to the broad and interconnected nature of the elements underpinning our financial and economic systems.

Why do credit and debt cause problems? How do the Basel I and II Accords, instead of protecting the economy, create an environment that is vulnerable to crises? How is it that some entities are considered “too big to fail,” and how do we explain the collusion that goes on in the heart of the financial world? The answers to all these questions lie in the complex mosaic of human behaviour. How to Create a Financial Crisis illustrates the convoluted mechanisms of a system that collectively can lead to recurring financial disasters.

The intention behind How to Create a Financial Crisis is to make certain key concepts accessible in order to provoke thought on how our economic and financial systems operate. The relevance of the subject, the unique way in which it is addressed, and its distribution in the mass media will be part of a coordinated effort to raise public awareness on the importance of the finance industry to our democratic way of life.

The user moves from one screen to the next, responding to the various economic stakeholders and determining the sources of the phenomenon. Léon Courville asks the user to be part of the conversation and to explore the factors in a financial crisis.

The user experience is designed to highlight issues related to actions, consequences, decision-making, behavioural science, psychology, logic, rational-choice theory and “science,” among other related topics. How to Create a Financial Crisis highlights five factors that can converge to cause an economic crisis:

1. Credit and Debt
2. Securitization
3. Regulations
4. Too Big to Fail
5. Oligarchies

The experience consists of a series of processes initiated by stakeholders in the world of finance, and the objective is to learn lessons from the patterns.

The aesthetics of the game are simple: clear and minimalist, but with a human aspect to illustrate the contrast between the economic concepts and the people who have developed them. The graphic universe is punctuated with discreet sounds, always in response to the actions taken by the user. Taking the form of a virtual conversation that’s enriched by further interaction, How to Create a Financial Crisis explores the financial-health principles of our economy.

« Unfortunately, financial crises have always been cyclical. Understanding what causes them could help us avoid them. »

 « Economics is anything but an exact science! »

 « With the loosening of banking rules, some banks won outsized influence in the economies of several countries. The problem was that the economic health of these countries now depends on the good health of these banks. Their bankruptcy would cause a systemic crisis. » 

« Regulations so sophisticated that only the banks take advantage of them, to the detriment of the entities responsible for them. »

« We’re starting to understand it, these days: ignorance is one of democracy’s worst enemies. »