The Generation X Files

I don’t know about you but I’m p*ssed off!

As usual, there’s no department to complain to so please, indulge me for 5 to 7 minutes if you can spare the time…

Yet again, the cost of living is about to shoot up (I was going to say rocket but let’s face it, that’s what the effing money’s being spent on!!).

The mere price of existence (cost of living….potato/pottatto…doesn’t matter when you can’t afford either!) doubled overnight because of decisions I didn’t make. Over things I have no choice in. And wouldn’t have agreed to if I did.

Once more, we’re going to have to find money that we don’t have for things that we all need. For reasons beyond our control. And there’s nothing we can do about it.

It reminds me of the banking crisis that we were all forced to forgive and forget about. Remember…in 2008…that we still haven’t really recovered from…?

I know a million things have happened (this year!) since then, but I remember it.

It was a bit like……well…..it sort of felt like….how can I explain…

Imagine you’re in a Group Chat. (You know the ones…you’ve been meaning to leave if only you could remember how…from a job you left years ago for example…people you barely remember now…)

A message comes through begging for your assistance. A friend of a friend that you barely know needs help. They’ve gambled all their money away and are about to become homeless.

Even though they’ve had to be bailed out in the past. Despite repeated warnings and the fact it was their own recklessness that put them in this position.

Eventually, you’re peer-pressured against your better judgement. You end up sending as much as you can even though you’re skint. Because nobody else is complaining and you don’t want to be the a*rsehole!

A few months later, you run into this person. They’re in designer clothing from head to toe, climbing out of an expensive sports car. They’re about to enter…a casino!

While you’ve had to tighten your financial belt they were buying theirs at Gucci and handing them out to their pals!

They breeze past you before you can confront them. You whip out your phone straight back to the Group Chat….but of course, they’ve already left it. When they upgraded to their brand new phone!

The worst thing is nobody else in the chat seems to mind so you still end up feeling an a*rsehole! Kicking yourself…knowing it will happen again…somehow trapped in this Group forever…

Well, that’s how it felt to me anyway.

Like having it rubbed in our faces after bailing them all out. A case of austerity for thee but not for me. A lack of gratitude or returning the favour.

What do I know though?

I don’t even really understand banking or the Fiat money system.

It feels a bit like trickery to me. A kind of money magic if you will, that keeps us under its spell.

Why else would we put our trust in special pieces of paper…fancily printed I.O.U.’s? Their value is created solely through authority and maintained through trust. Not backed by any commodities like gold. No intrinsic value.

I know one thing, the banks don’t hold as much of these physical “trust tokens” as they used to in their vaults.

Nowadays, they keep them inside computers too. Probably because that doesn’t take up as much space. (Bitcoins live in there as well but they’ve got to be mined or something. Let’s not worry about them.)

Most likely it’s because the technology inside can do the maths for the fractional-reserve banking. It’s a bit too hard to do on your fingers! For the CPU it’s easy…PC! (Sorry….couldn’t resist!)

If you don’t know what that is, it’s the thing where the bank holds a small fraction of customer deposits in reserve and lends out the rest.

When the bank holds a 10% reserve, they can multiply deposits up to 10 times in loans.

There’s a really simple formula, look:

The money multiplier, m, is the inverse of the reserve requirement, R:

Okay, let’s just stop right there!

This is all just gibberish to me! I’m copying and pasting at this point….I don’t know what any of it means! (Which is why I’ve done links to Wiki pages throughout! Just click on highlighted text)

One thing I do know, is that it’s why we must never, ever do a thing called a “bank run”. That’s if all of us tried to withdraw our cash at the same time. It would be very bad and collapse the system.

Because not all of it really exists in the physical world….some of it is…inside the computer’s RAM or something.

Well no, probably not that…it’s another thing that’s too complicated for me.

It’s probably fine, the banks know what they’re doing when it comes to money! Let’s just leave it up to them! It’s not like they haven’t let us down or misled us before is it?!

I just need to know how to tap a thing with a card or phone and the money zips out from my account. Easy.

I don’t even have to have any in there to begin with. I can buy things now and worry about it later! It’s almost like free money. That you have to pay back! With interest!

The bank can give me some money (they don’t really have) that I can pay back in the future. At a rate of about 20% APR. To cover their costs I guess.

Incurred from ‘lending’ me worthless promise papers created on a computer using a formula… ?

Nah that can’t be right can it? I told you I don’t understand it. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

Like so many other things nowadays…

A more suspicious person might think it was all by design. But not me. I just don’t understand the world but that’s okay.

Best not to worry about it. Leave it to the people in charge. Look at my phone and get distracted by that instead….

Nope that was a bad idea, best head out to buy supplies and stock up! In case the aliens show up soon…or some more epic fury…

Maybe stuff the mattress with some pretty green too….if nothing else, we’ll be able to burn it!

Citizen Jane x ✌️

p.s Happy Mother’s Day to all the mums in the UK. 💎💐 Especially mine! Love you heaps ❤️ xxx