If you have ‘invested’ or ‘speculated’ in any bitcoin type of what you think is ‘money’ you may be losing your ‘butt’ over your ‘foolishness’. You may have also loved the movie Idiocracy which was also not based in a truthful world.
Not backed by any kind of conventional monetary standard, cryptocurrency depends on a blockchain or something like that which those who are coming after your money, have craftily engineered. To those who love risk taking, this is the biggest gambit ever. The money you invest into Bitcoin is not safe from value fluctuations as we see in the 70% value drop it has suffered this past year. Bitcoin is a volatile investment. If you’re looking for a safe venture with guaranteed returns, look to other forms of investment. The average American has tried to make sense of the system. If only there were a simple answer to these pesky questions, we’d feel a little better about how badly the dollar is doing against the Euro, if only we knew what that meant. In a survey 40% said the Euro was a tiny tinny car from some small nation whose name they couldn’t pronounce, 30% said what? and the rest said, none of the above.
If only we could understand the verbiage they use to describe our economic system, we still wouldn’t have a handle on it, but we’d at least know that compound interest is not a simonizing franchise. If we’d paid better attention in economics class instead of passing notes to Sallie Mae maybe we’d know that Fannie Mae and Ginny Mae were not cousins of Ellie Mae from the classic TV series Beverly Hillbillies. Let’s learn some valuable information on our monetary system.
The Fed Funds rate, the shortest of short-term rates, is the overnight interest rate which banks charge each other; literally, an overnight loan. Vinny Mae is the name of the bagman who collects these overnight debts and will add points for lateness, except on the weekends when he shaves points for profit. Points are single digit percentages you have to pay Vinny. A digit is what you may lose if you don’t.
Some credit cards are “fixed rate” but even the APR (Annual Pain Rate) on a fixed rate credit card can change over time. The credit card company must tell you before increasing the fixed APR. They do this with a strategy known as sending you what looks like junk mail. You look at the envelope which says, End credit worries now, or Dated Material, reply today and if you’re like me, you rip it up with a vengeance. They then raise the rate, and you don’t notice for 2 years because the rules are written by the same person who makes up the confusing language for extra charges on your phone bill. A looming credit card bubble will be caused by historically lax lending standards which will enable your pet chinchilla to qualify for a platinum card. Your personal credit bubble is the smallest part of a full-scale drooling effect from the mouth which occurs when you finally realize the minimum payment will never in your lifetime draw down the principal.
A debt instrument is not in the banker’s band. A ‘float’ does not include ice cream and a balloon payment is not necessarily for your child’s party. So will a raise in interest rates provide the impetus the leading indicators will need spur the economy? Only if you use it to buy more stuff. And remember, no interest for 3 years but if your desire is to link snacking with cryptocurrency, you’re in luck.
For more than 100 years Hostess has made snacking popular, and they now want you to mix some fun with their High Fructose Corn Syrup. Hostess Brands, Inc. debuted a limited-edition snack called $TWINKcoin under its Twinkies snack cake brand. The new $TWINKcoin is a play on the current cryptocurrency frenzy and features coin-shaped cakes. The cakes are similar to the regular Twinkies in composition and flavor and feature a vanilla sponge cake exterior and crème-filled interior made in a disc shape to mimic the shape of an enlarged coin. This is the only way you’ll get any value at all from anything associated with the crypto-pirates.
The new $TWINKcoin snack cakes will be available at Walmart stores starting at the end of June for a limited time. They are distributed in boxes of 10 individually wrapped cakes at the suggested retail price of $3.49. You can either buy them and eat them or purchase an NFT (Non Fungible Token) of them (Basically, a picture) which will prove ownership of the picture but not provide any nourishment. At least you can bite into a real one and get a little food value.
