Title: “Rule of 72”
[A cigarette dangles from my lips as I stare at the flickering numbers on the Bloomberg terminal. The glow of the screen reflects in my tired eyes. Another sleepless night. Another war—only this one doesn’t involve guns. Just numbers. And numbers, I’ve learned, lie harder than politicians.]
Ashton Kutcher said to double my money using the Rule of 72. Divide 72 by the interest rate, and boom—you know how long until your cash multiplies. Cute trick. Real cute.
But I’ve seen tricks before.
The kind where a man in a suit smiles, shakes your hand, and promises you the world—right before he pulls the rug out. Madoff did it. Countless hedge fund ghouls still do it. And now Kutcher’s acolytes are nodding along like sheep, lining up for the slaughter.
“Just invest, bro. The market always goes up.”
Yeah. Until it doesn’t.
I’ve seen hyperinflation before. Not in textbooks. Not in some billionaire’s TED Talk. I’ve seen it in the eyes of men trading wheelbarrows of cash for a loaf of bread. Weimar Germany. Zimbabwe. Venezuela. Soon? Everywhere.
The suits in D.C. keep printing. The banks keep leveraging. And the little guy? He’s stacking pennies while the fire gets closer.
One day, the register won’t stop at billions. Or trillions. It’ll hit quadrillions—then keep going. Buzz Lightyear was right: “To infinity… and beyond.”
Money won’t just be worthless. It’ll be a joke.
And for what?
I can’t buy Nelly’s love. Can’t buy loyalty. Can’t buy back the years I lost crawling through vents, planting C4, watching good men die for bad reasons.
So why bother?
The system’s rigged. Always has been.
I take a drag, exhale slow. The terminal’s still blinking. Numbers rising, falling—meaningless.
I shut it off.
Some wars aren’t worth fighting.
[Mission Failed: Economy Broken.]
If the proles aren’t eating while Kutcher lives high on the hog, then it is good for these massive fortunes to disappear SNAKE:
Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin… Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with the flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again… Take this great power away from them and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in… But, if you want to continue to be a slave of the bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankers continue to create money and control credit.
Josiah Stamp