"It was one of those pseudo-documentaries on what money is and how you increase it, and it tried to teach the rewards for investing your dollars correctly. The film dwelt on the gratifying side of accumulating cash. Nothing was said about money being a root of evil. I pleaded with Ham Luske to include the dark aspects of hoarding money, if only to take advantage of the gags such inclusions would suggest. Walt would never have approved the film. He had a delicate balance between taste and storytelling, and would have looked for the negative side of money.
     "This was the only time that a Disney character appeared in a comic book before he appeared in a film. Working in animation, I didn't pay too much attention to the comic books, so I was surprised when I heard from Robert Crumb that Barks was one of the good artists. I began to look at his comics to see why he was different, and I saw that his imagination was a lot bigger than everyone else's, and he chose very unusual story angles. But none of that was captured in Scrooge McDuck and Money. All we did was use a reasonable facsimile of Scrooge. From there the association was nil.
     "As animation supervisor, I suppose I sat down and talked about how McDuck would be handled, since it was his first appearance on the screen. What we drew was really Donald Duck with a silk hat and a different costume. It was not very different from drawing Ludwig von Drake. If you draw the Duck and Von Drake long enough and then have to draw Scrooge, you'll be influenced by graphic habits. Besides, we were using Scrooge in a role that was basically Ludwig's: all he did was lecture. There was absolutely no humor in that film.
     "Why did we make it? We were trying to educate our audience about greed in a nice way, without mentioning greed. But most people have a negative picture of bankers: they steal from the poor and feed the rich, and it was wrong to eulogize that. Besides, in the free enterprise system, somebody had to lose somewhere along the line. If everyone followed Scrooge's advice to the letter, the system wouldn't work."

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