Effects of Currency Fluctuations on Consumer Spending
I’m in rare form. In the basement of a tavern we seldom frequent, a friend and myself turn the corner. It is a busy night. Us with one or two beers already imbibed, counted the rotation of people coming up the stairs. We bought a beer. More people out than in for a moment, so we venture downstairs.
The music upstairs dissipates to an echo and is replaced by jovial cheers. The room smells of air conditioning and cleaner. We enter at an inopportune time. Scanning the tiny room; it is very busy. Both cork boards worn from years of proper abuse. The right side gathered a dozen friends against the fragile wall and exit sign trying to math the score out loud and in their heads. The left side dart board is occupied. A lone man with incredible shoulders, back, and chest muscles checks and pockets his phone and stands back against the table facing the board. He holds half the room with a soft patient gaze. Clean beard, jeans, band shirt, and a mesh hat. Has to be a soldier or former drug-addict. A Bud Heavy in his left hand. A true gentleman. An employee sashays behind us and up the stairs with a tray of sliced tomatoes.
Negotiations are nothing but cordial. He is their with his girl following a concert at Paradise Rock Club. Where Aerosmith started out, but we only ever saw Noah Kahan. She comes downstairs with the darts in hand. She’s as handsome as him. We start a round of cricket. Play a second, then a third. Guinness flies down the gullet like it’s going out of style. He’s a discharged Marine volunteering at the VA. I tell him I used to see it off the highway on the way to the track. He tells me he wants to give back to the people who have lost everything, but gave him so much. I tell him how many major wars in American history were followed by veterans being served bullets instead of pensions. He asks me what I do. I tell him I am working on this cool new money. I tell him I love the potential. I work with a flaming heart toward an abstract goal. I tell him I do everything Ad maiorem Dei gloriam. We bought more beer.
I pull out my phones to show him what it looks like. Panic on the brain. The app on screen refreshes and reloads. Dramatic shifts where the balance fluctuates minute by minute. Commas adding and subtracting. I thought it a mistake. I remember that it was May, but need to check the charts to see that it was indeed, Thursday the 13th of 2021. The numbers are too crazy to politely show. I tell him my phones busted. Another round of darts. We bought another beer. We surrender the darts to the bar upstairs when someone else asks to play.
We trade a few more stories and then numbers. They offer to drive us home. We tell them we live three block away. They insist. We tell them they would have to cross two carriage ways. They offer us cold Taco Bell in their truck. We accept. The moment we climb in they retract their promise apologetically. I tell them there is no sorry. We pull in front of our building and say goodbye. We never spoke again and I can’t figure out who they are in my phone.
I wasn’t in the same rush to sell my positions as I had been when I stumbled off the plane from Dresden in 2017. It was still undervalued. As it was then so today. I was at another bar recently and am shocked to see every beer at $8 or $9. Even the cheap ones. There fighting really hard to keep it under $10, you can feel it. Should currency collapses begin, every citizen will not hesitate to do a quick opportunity cost to evaluate ordering another round. I think about the below image constantly.
We rest on the precipice of a U.S. credit default. It won’t happen, but the solution will be equally grim. If the apathy resonating in my heart is an indicator for what the legislative branch will negotiate, best luck to all!
- Patrick