Saturday, June 19, 2010

The Future of Money

Just the other day, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev illustrated his call for a supranational currency to replace the dollar by pulling from his pocket a sample coin of a "united future world currency" (oddly, the coin was in English).


Well, I guess great Russian minds think alike because none other than our own son, Lev, had already done that. Our local bank held a contest recently to create examples of what the future of money would look like. The contest was judged by the town Tax Collector (who couldn't wait to get it into the town coffers) and Lev took second place.

Apparently, Lev's vision of the future of money is that the United States of Amerika (sic) will outsource minting to Future Million Money, Inc. (FMM) who will mint $5 billion dollar bills. The faces of presidents will be replaced by flying cars.

I'm not sure if Lev understood the concept of inflation thinking we would all be carrying $5B bills in our pocket in the future or if he understood that US debt levels have reached unsustainable levels (about $13 trillion in debt and about $60 trillion in unfunded Medicare and pension liabilities) and we'll need bills this large to pay it off. Should I ask him to print up a couple thousand of these and send them to the White House?



His picture appeared in the newspaper and he received a trophy; an actual trophy for something he earned, unlike the baseball and hockey trophies kids receive nowadays at Everybody-Gets-a-Trophy Day, merely for showing up at games.