About
four-thirty in the morning there is a robin named Larry Bird that sits outside
of my window each day, just as the eastern sky begins to lighten, and screeches
his sunrise song.
It wakes the
cats up and it wakes me up; but I don’t mind.
Our bedroom is comfortable, with an overhead
fan. My beautiful wife sleeps
comfortingly next to me, and I lie there and think. I don’t think about getting up and feeding
the cats, or making tea, or the problems of the day; I just allow myself, in
the stillness of the early morning, to think.
I think about books I have read,
about projects I am working on, about blogs I might write, about science, the universe,
life, the human animal, earth’s environment; and today about banks.
I never
thought about it before, but how the hell do banks work?
I just had an
electronic transfer from PayPal for a few bucks from selling on e-bay. Where is the actual money?
Say a man in
Florida electronically transfers one-million dollars from his Florida bank to a
bank in Minnesota. He instantly gets a
notice that the transfer is completed and he now has a million dollars in his
account in Minnesota – but does he?
Where is the
actual money? Does the bank in Florida load
up ten-thousand one-hundred-dollar-bills in a Wells Fargo truck and have it
driven to the bank in Minnesota? Does
the bank in Minnesota actually receive the cash?
The federal
government just distributed $1,200 as a stimulus to all Americans. Let’s say that our bank received 5000
electronic transfers of $1,200 from the U.S. Treasury. Now the bank has to credit $6,000,000 to
their member's accounts. Does the Fed
actually load up $6,000,000 in a suitcase with Donald Trump’s name on it and
UPS it to your local bank? Where is the
money?
I know that
banks give out loans and charge interest; but they almost always issue a
check. Where is the cash? How is it distributed?
This is
nothing that will keep me awake tonight; but I am just wondering.
How many
people nowadays actually take the time, not while driving, not while eating
lunch, not while working on your motorcycle…; but a quiet time where they can
just think – let the mind wander and think.
Einstein
called it ‘thought experiments’. He could
not actually see the micro-miniature world of quantum mechanics, but he thought
about it. Today there is an entire field
of science called theoretical physics that operates on thought
experiments. They think about it!
I make no
analogy between Einstein and myself; but thinking - having time to think – is an
activity rarely practiced in todays society.
I have the feeling that instead of thinking and reflection, people today
just grab their cell phones when a few minutes of quiet time presents
itself.
You can
think while you are getting stoned,
But the problem
is,
you can’t
remember your conclusion
the Ol’Buzzard
