BORROWED WISDOM

 Is your head spinning over the price of eggs or gasoline?  Are you consumed right now thinking of what you are paying in taxes?  What is this world coming to?  I think I made less than $10 per hour when I got out of the military, was married, had children and owned a home.  

The last time our country was out of debt was in January 1835.  President Andrew Jackson was in charge and he, along with the congress, kept us that way for two years.  Now, we have to measure our debt in trillions of dollars.  I can't even imagine what a trillion dollars is.

It's hard for me to think in terms of today's dollars.  This week the Cincinnati Bengals made a contract with a large person, Orlando Brown Jr., to play on their offensive line next season and beyond.  That contract is reportedly for a total of $64.092 million for four years work.  In order to entice this guy to sign the contract, the home team has to hand over a check for $31 million of it immediately.  I think that was the critical part because people who stand 6'8" tall and weigh about 340 lbs order a lot when driving thru McDonalds.

Last weekend, Texan Scottie Scheffler played golf four days in a row at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida and was given a check for $4.5 million and automatic entry into future events where lots of money is available to those who don't lose their balls that often.  I've played golf four days in a row a few times but I not only lost a ball or two, I got blisters on my fingers and pain in my lower back.  

On the top of the recent national news, are stories about bank failures.   It seems a couple of the "regional" banks got caught with taking in money from customers, investing that money in order to make a profit and then being unable to cover the deposits of  it's customers when they wanted it back.  I think it's almost that simple.  Our government has a program (FDIC) for banks and their customers  which offers them insurance to cover all individual deposits up to $250,000.   As of the end of business at the end of last year, customers had deposited about $175 billion into the Silicon Valley Bank and the bank had $209 billion in assets.  No problem.  How much of that was covered by FDIC has not been determined.  The balance between deposits and assets evidently plummeted in recent weeks and they didn't have the cash or assets to cover the deposits.  Big problem.  

People could lose big money in theses bank closings.  Our federal government says it will not let that happen and whatever they do will not cost us little people anything.  (cough, cough).  

 All this brings me to this conclusion:  if  the Bengals new left tackle, Orlando Brown Jr., wants  to protect his money and have the government guarantee it is safe, he will have to deposit his $31 million signing bonus into 124 different banks.   I'm not sure we have that many in Cincinnati.  

Like I said, this money stuff has got my head spinning.