Two nearly identical men in dark suits and mirrored sunglasses showed up at my door. One was about 6 foot tall. The other was maybe 6’1″. “We’re here with the Treasury, Fraud Division,” said the taller one.
“Come in — I’ve been expecting you,” I replied.
“We’ve come about suspicious withdrawals from your account,” said the shorter agent. “Normally, we would send you a routine inquiry by mail, but the amounts are concerning… as are the lack of deposits. Would you care to explain?”
I sighed. “You’ll want to sit down,” I guided my guests into the dining room and cleared stacks of gold bars, empty bottles of Krug cuvée, and high-end electronics from the table. “This is going to sound strange. Insane, even. But… it’s easy to check out and verify. You see, every night, any money I have in my bank account triples.”
“Come again?” said the lanky Fed.
“It’s nothing criminal, nothing immoral. Just, hard to believe. You see, I found a leprechaun caught in a snare. When I freed him, he gave me a magic silver dollar. Wherever I put it, he said, the money I had would triple at the stroke of midnight. I deposited the dollar, and after a week had over $10M in my account. I realized I needed to spend it faster than it accumulated, or things would soon get out of control!”
“Wait, what do you mean?” said the fractionally smaller agent.
“In 13 days, it would be $250 mill. In a month, I’d have enough cash to pay off the Federal debt. A few days after that, it would compound to the point that every dollar not in my account would be diluted into worthlessness. More money, chasing the same amount of stuff. Maybe it was a trick, or maybe leprechauns are just lousy at math! If I let it keep growing, the US dollar would soon collapse.
So, I’ve been doing my patriotic best to spend like crazy.”
The agents huddled together and exchanged fierce whispers. The towering agent finally said “This explains a lot of problems we’ve encountered recently. So, hear me out. Have you considered transferring to an account in Swiss Francs? Or Chinese Yuan?”
I cocked my head to the side. “How would that solve my spending problem?”
He smiled and replied “It wouldn’t. But you can pick who gets to enjoy runaway inflation. We can also make your tax problems go away, if that helps.”
“What tax problems?” I asked.
The troll-like agent replied with an even larger grin, “You’ve reached a tax bracket that assesses more than 100% of your income.”
George Morris wears many hats and is bound to none. He has (appropriately) a BS in Advertising from UT Austin and lives in Dallas, Texas. With a relatively humorless day-job conducting government surveys and cataloging numismatic collections, his curiosity is free to wander. His work has appeared in a range of publications from Texas Highway Patrol Magazine and Numis International to Wily Winchester and Lost Lake Folk Opera magazine. He embraces chaos and unfinished projects, from stageplays and medallic art, to ghostly tales and a murder-mystery set aboard a zeppelin cruiseship. You can find more of his projects at ProstStageProduction.com.
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