Financial Gum

I’ll leave it to you to decide if yesterday’s two percent drop in the stock market is the end of the world or not. My money is all tied up elsewhere. Not only tied up. It’s also blindfolded and held in a windowless basement. I figure it’s being held for ransom, in advance. The collage note that ends in No Funny Stuff hasn’t arrived yet, so I don’t know exactly who’s fixing to steal it all from me. Again. I just figure it will have some sort of official seal on the podium they eventually send the note from.

A long time ago, my wife and I visited Italy. It was just before they swapped over from the lira to the euro. The exchange rate was extremely silly. I don’t remember the exact figure, but it was something along the lines of 1400 lira to a US dollar. It made trips to the redi-teller into high finance. You had to withdraw a telephone number just to eat lunch. This is from a currency that was exchanged at five to a dollar until WW I. It’s amazing what folks who favor multiple wars and poor governance and central banking shenanigans can accomplish when they set their minds to it.

I distinctly remember standing on the sidewalk in Italy, and wanting to discard a wad of chewing gum. Italian cities are not models of cleanliness, but there was no way I was going to spit gum on the sidewalk in a foreign country. I wouldn’t do it in America. Of course all cities everywhere seemed to be paved with chicle, but I gather I don’t run with the crowd, manners-wise. I’m a fastidious barbarian, I guess. At any rate, I patted myself down like a suspect, found nothing handy to wrap the gum in, and finally reached into my wallet and used some Italian paper money. The money got the job done, which is more than it could have accomplished in a restaurant unless it was baled like hay.

Our car has been busted a lot lately. It’s very old. If we keep it another six years, I think it’s considered an antique car in some states. I’ve paid mechanics rather a lot of money recently to keep it going. But in general, the money doesn’t help. The mechanics are scheduled out for weeks in advance, and waiting doesn’t advance your cause all that much, because they can’t keep their appointments, either. Several turned the jobs down flat. They don’t like that kind of car. The parts cost small fortunes but can’t be found in general circulation. And for the most part, the fixes don’t fix the problem no matter how much you’re willing to pay.

So our car was busted yesterday, and we needed it to return our son’s car to the mechanic who did two thousand dollars of repairs that didn’t fix the problem the day before. I made my decision tree. I pictured the various rude women who man the phones at the garages barking at us that their life was a nightmare, and telling us we’d have to hold our breath and stand on one leg for a week or two and then leave the car in the lot and someone might look at it. I looked up the part, and the only two places that sold it wanted between 350 and 550 dollars for it, and they didn’t have any. I looked in my wallet, and saw all the American lire in there, unable to accomplish anything useful.

My power steering cooling system was leaking all over my driveway. Since I installed my driveway myself, I’m perhaps overly fond of my driveway. So a fix couldn’t wait. I don’t steer all that much when I’m driving, or even look out the windshield more than necessary, but you never know when you’re going to need to turn sharply into a tavern parking lot. I’d prefer to be able to turn the wheel on command. I’m fussy like that. I don’t remember signing up for NASCAR or anything, or cornering like Jason Bourne on his way to kill fifteen people in order to find out why he’s an assassin, but apparently I need to cool my power steering fluid. I had many more important things to do than cool my power steering fluid, but nobody asked me before they put the car together. I shrugged and got on with it.

I went to the auto parts store, where it took three clerks to find an aftermarket universal power steering coolant radiator, even though I brought them a printout from their website with their own SKU on it. I removed both the headlights, and the front bumper, cut the hoses from the old steering cooler, which is allegedly worth one-tenth the price I paid for the whole car in the first place, pushed the hoses on the $27 replacement cooler, and zip-tied the new part to the old one.

The dictionary definition of inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. I’d like to amend that definition right here and now. When you have money, but you can’t buy anything useful with it, goods or services, that’s true inflation. That’s why people ladle what money they have on frivolous things when inflation really gets going. They don’t overpay for useful stuff. There is no useful stuff. It’s why a thousand point drop in the Dow Jones will probably just merit a shrug. It’s all funny money anyway. There’s nothing worth buying, so they wrap their financial gum in still more money and keep buggering on.