Cash Withdrawal A Billion Dollars

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A billionaire is a mirage because he cannot go to the bank and tell the bank manager to give him a billion dollars in $1,000 dollar bills. Can he? The bank manager will discreetly call Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who will call his Intelligence Chief, who will alert the army and reservists.

Pardon me for this highly, highly hypothetical scenario. I blame Donald Trump, the world famous, self-proclaimed billionaire for saying he doesn’t have the paltry sum of half a billion dollars, the penalty for defrauding the State of New York.

We use terms like billionaire almost every day but do we know what they really mean? I’m clueless about high finance, because there’s nothing high about my bank balance. How does the whole billionaire thing work? I’m asking because:

The billionaire buys things on credit: houses, factories and land. That is not hard cash, is it? Every month, he pays interest on the $2 million he borrowed to buy these properties. He will might even sell them before he repays a thousand dollars of that $2 million. We go to bed every night but property value doesn’t sleep, up it goes. He off-loads these properties and makes a killing. The government will tax him obviously, but when did the loan become hard cash?

I’m not making any sense, I know. Much as I try to follow this Trump thing, the more I realize that I can never understand these paper billionaires. Cash money. That’s what I have, said a blues singer somewhere in the Peach State, where genius Republicans call the shots.

Nonqaba waka Msimang

Executive Blogger

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