Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

In a Scooby-Doo-style setup, a ghost that has been haunting banks is unmasked to reveal... the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He explains that he was trying to make banks spooky and unpleasant to decrease saving, because when people save too much it reduces consumption and investment, which causes economic stagnation. When asked why he does not just lower interest rates, he explains that rates are already low and cites data from the St. Louis Fed suggesting that "having ghosts run around in banks is the most effective solution once standard monetary methods have failed." He then warns that if they stop him, the economy will become depressed and "there will be thousands of deaths on your hands." The final panel shows the gang uncertainly asking an officer to "go ahead" and judge whether "bank ghosts are real."

The Humor

The comic is a parody of Scooby-Doo's classic "unmask the villain" formula, but with an economics twist. Instead of the villain being a greedy real estate developer, it is the head of the Federal Reserve conducting unconventional monetary policy. The joke satirizes the concept of the "zero lower bound" -- the problem that once interest rates hit zero, central banks run out of conventional tools to stimulate the economy. The Fed chairman's ghost scheme is an absurd metaphor for the kinds of unconventional policies (quantitative easing, negative interest rates) that central banks have actually resorted to. The moral dilemma at the end -- the gang realizing that stopping the "villain" might crash the economy -- is a comedic inversion of the Scooby-Doo formula, where catching the bad guy is always unambiguously good.

References

The comic references the Federal Reserve (the central bank of the United States), the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (known for its economic research and the FRED database), and the economic concept of the zero lower bound / liquidity trap. The Scooby-Doo cartoon format, where meddling kids unmask ghosts as humans in disguise, is the structural template for the comic.