Money Money Money, MONEY!

Or, More Plausible Explanations for Inexplicable Crap

Since I’m running way behind on this series, I decided to answer all of Alisa Bowman’s questions about money. Let’s begin.

Who ever came up with the idea that tossing money in a mall fountain could make a wish come true? I mean really. It’s just a commercial ploy to get us to part with our money and get nothing in return. Yet we keep doing it. Why?

Let me begin by saying that the entire premise of plausible explanations is that I don’t look anything up and pull the answers strictly from the Tracypedia (or as some call it, my brain), sometimes through the bootyass. That in mind, I suppose here is as good a place as any to confess that when I’m alone in public places I like to hide loose change and dollar bills for other people to find. For example, at the trolley stop, I might fold up a dollar bill and stick it in a crack in the wheelchair lift so that is visible but not obvious. Or if I see a payphone, I might put a quarter or two in the change slot. Nobody tell my husband I do this, btw; he wouldn’t approve.

Why do I do this? Well, because I’ve observed that when farmers want to grow stuff, they take a little bit of the old stuff and put it in the ground and hopefully turn into lots of new stuff. What do I want? Fortune! Literal, metaphorical, transcendentazendious, whatever kind of fortune you can think of, I want some. So by giving away a tiny bit of my fortune, I am sowing the seeds for my enormous fortune later on down the line.

We probably all have this urge and it’s easy enough to see how the sowing metaphor evolved into making wishes. Plus, it is really fun to throw stuff into water, in fact, being by the water fulfills our primal need to be near a ready source of hydration. That’s why malls have large fountains, to make our hunting/gathering experience complete. They knew we’d want to throw crap in there no matter what, so by taking advantage of our sowing/wishing urge, they circumvented our littering urge because only a real, total jackass would throw their empty Sbarro cup into a pool of dreams.

Where does all of the money go in a bad economy? Does someone hide it in their basement and bring it back out once the economy is good again?

Pretty much, yeah. When the economy gets bad, what’s the first thing that happens? Somebody goes on the tv and says “Hey! The Economy is BAD!” and it’s like a switch goes off in all of our heads that says “Oh no, the ECONOMY is BAD! I better stop spending now and start looking up how to sew my husband new neckties out of the polyester granny panties my mom sent me!” And so nobody is spending money and the economy gets worse, so people and corporations start spending less money. A lot of the money never really existed in the first place, as it was in the form of lines of credit which I suppose are backed by something.  I suspect it was other lines of credit or collateral nobody can sell now because even if we have money we all suddenly feel poor.

When and how will it come back? I am not sure, but I think it will involve something like the high tech green fuel/shopping bag industry taking off and people taking their cues from the GoGreen Gazillionaires.

Why do bankers have such cush hours? Banks are almost always closed.

Okay, yeah, like you want to give them more hours in the day to screw with our cash. Heh, I remember when I worked at a bank, we had all Federal holidays and 4 weeks total paid time off. It was sweet.

Why are there still $2 bills in circulation even though they haven’t been printed for at least 20 years?

It’s because Korean women like my mom save them because they are special. No lie, I think the last time I checked my mom had like $500 in two dollar bills tucked away in her china cabinet. These are slowly put back into circulation when their friend’s kids graduate from something/have a baby/get married where they are then presented in a nice card. If the friend is also Korean, these bills are bought back for the other Korean mom to save, but if they are other than Korean, they just let their kids spend them willy nilly even though they are SPECIAL and might be worth MONEY some day. Ditto Susan B. Anthony dollars and JFK half dollars and about 89,789,046,784 Lira in coins my mom still has in case my kids want them some day.

Oh dang, I think I know now where all the missing money is.

I hope you all learned something today and please feel free to ask me to explain your inexplicable crap.

Tagged as: banks, money, plausible explanations for inexplicable crap, two dollar bills, wishing wells