My last post pierced the thin veneer of pretending I don’t notice America’s national debt. I shouldn’t have looked behind the curtain, but a few years ago I was even worse at pretending. Take a ride in the wayback machine with me to around 2007…
The economy had a hiccup. First Bush and then Obama tried to “fix” it using a politician’s superpower; pissing away money. It became a contest to see which party was better at fucking up.
At first Bush took a strong lead. He gave it the Harvard/Yale try with unpopular bank bailouts. I have to hand it to him, nothing says “piss off the people” like burying bankers with unearned money. Bush probably thought he had it in the bag.
Later Obama proved he had the chops to become world champion money burner of the century. While Bush routed money to his pals, Obama routed it everywhere. He managed to really ramp up taxpayer dissatisfaction with “shovel ready” bad ideas like destroying Volvos. A comeback story leading to a landslide of suck.
It just goes to show that with enough isolation a person can believe destroying cars poor people drive creates money. Once you can do that the sky is the limit.
Watching DC burn money like a monkey with a blowtorch boggled my mind. My dog suggested I get a hobby so I started making charts. Check it out (link goes to a post from 2011):
Many decades of intelligence and then America goes APESHIT.
The point is, I’d lost a subtle connection. I’d lost the innate (and irrational) belief that one particular printed slip of paper is magically worth more than some other slip of paper… such as toilet paper. If you still believe, cling tight to it. Much like belief in Santa, once you lose it, life gets scarier.
Aside from rants and charts, the other thing I did was buy Zimbabwe dollars. This was right after Zimbabwe had really screwed the pooch. I spent a pittance on e-bay and got some $100,000,000,000.00 Zimbabwe notes. I had great fun with them.
They made good bookmarks. They looked pretty. I gave them as gifts.
They’re interesting and also an economic lesson for the math averse. When people started telling me how spending lots and lots of imaginary unicorn money would make the economy awesome because spread the wealth socialist happy time… I’d nod and give ’em a $100,000,000,000.00 note. Maybe I’d say something snide like “this will help pay for the free Obamaphones” or “I really care about your hippie cause, here’s my donation” or even “math is hard, here’s free money”. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen someone lecturing you about free magic stuff grasping a $100,000,000,000.00 bill that’s totally real and totally useless. The light bulb goes off with the realization “this idea has been tried before“.
I had a lot of fun with those fancy printed pieces of nothing.
Once, I made a trade at a pawn shop. “I like that object. Will you take $100,000,000,000.00 for it?” They got a novelty and I got my object. I’ll write about it sometime.
Eventually I “spent” all my useless money. I’m just plain out of valueless $100,000,000,000.00 bills. Bummer.
I was going to buy more but now they’re all “uncirculated” and sold for collectors. (Still cheap but not “give ’em away” cheap.) Ironically I coulda’ bought a suitcase full of useless paper at fifty cents a pop and sell them right now (a few years later) for a small profit. Does anything more perfectly represent our strange era than regretting giving away a $100,000,000,000,000.00 bill which cost me $0.50 because now it’s probably worth $2? Just roll it around in your head; the world is nuts!
If only there was some other place that’s demonstrating the magic of socialist economics.
Oh yeah, Venezuela. Last I knew a single American greenback was worth well over 1,000 bolivar fuerte.
So I’m thinking I want wads of useless money because they amuse me. I’m not a collector, I’m just weird. There’s got to be someone in Venezuela who’s staring at a wad of useless money on the kitchen table that would love to have a few greenbacks instead. We could strike a deal.
Incidentally it doesn’t have to be physical greenbacks; I can transfer a bitcoin or a phone card or ship a package of Mountain House or whatever is appropriate. If you’re such a person, or know of someone who’s sitting on a wad of junk fiat paper, drop me an e-mail (for privacy) or post something in the comments.
Incidentally I’m proposing a legitimate small purchase of physical paper or coins. I don’t want your Nigerian inheritance and I don’t want anyone in Venezuela (or me) getting in trouble. The late stages of a socialist economic collapse can get ugly so please take care. This is just for fun and maybe it’ll modestly help someone who’s in the shit in a tough place.