When you are considering a new job possibility, it is important to find out all you can about their pension plan. Of course if the company doesn’t offer a pension plan, you are all on your own, As many people found out recently, poor planning can wipe out your plan altogether.
Money isn’t money any more just a bunch of 1s and 0s drifting in and out of computers that keep track of where it came from, where it’s going and whose account gets credited. When you go to your ATM machine and make a withdrawal from your account, the teller is not involved in your transaction because at the bank no paper money changes hands. A computer simply adjusts the code that says how much is left in your account. You probably already know this, but it is an example of how fast adjustments to accounts can happen. In order to maximize their income, banks have kept up to date on their hardware and software to the point the second you touch the button to close the transaction your account has been adjusted.
Sonny asks - what did we do before there were banks? My answer is, life was a lot simpler in the good old days.
It’s like a trip I took to Prague, Czechoslovakia a few years ago. Before they would let me into their country, I had to spend at least 200 U.S. Dollars in exchange for Chech Korunas at the official exchange rate, which was 7 or 8 to one at that time. A taxi hailed me as soon as I stepped out on the curb in front of the airport, drove up eagerly, and asked if I had U. S. Dollars before he opened the passenger door. During that short cab ride, I got a lesson in how bad government interference with free markets can be.
I’ll call him “Joe,” since I can’t remember his name, bargained for some of my dollars starting at 17 to 1 and ending up at 30 to 1. On the open market, the U. S. Dollar is highly regarded, People living in countries that don’t have banks that can be trusted, hoard $100 bills in a tin can, in some cases, representing their life savings. However, the old economic canon about supply and demand can be perverted when the politicians in control of the treasury decide to print more money in support of some “worthy” cause. At any rate, it is normal for the money supply to expand and contract along with normal fluctuations in demand.
Sonny is telling his friends that the securities exchanges have been overestimating the future value of corporate stocks for some time now making virtual billionaires out of employees holding stock options with unrealistic market prices. He says the recent market’s free fall was merely an adjustment to reality and throwing billions or trillions at the problem will not in the end cure the malaise.
Sonny says, “Free markets are always damaged by government fiddling.”
Words to live by: Never marry for money. You can borrow it cheaper.
