Welcome to the jungle78
Another chew of the pen and then she had a revelation.
‘Discounting is just the opposite of compounding!’
You move from a time in the future (on the right) to today (on
the left). The promise of €10 in a year is only worth €9.09 today.
‘I get it!’ she screamed. ‘At last, I get it!’
Our eyes met. Was she going to leap across the desk and hug me?
Was she going to give me a great big smacker or a re ned peck
on the cheek? Was she . . . well, no she wasn’t.
Discounting
Borrow
€9.09
€9.09
Today Last day of
the year
Discount €0.91
Worth €10
to the bank
Around this time I noticed a new cynicism about Jerry. There was
a hardening where once there was humour. He told me once over
the top of his drink: ‘If you can smile when things go wrong, it’s
probably because there’s someone you can blame.’ But there was
no cackling laugh, just a gallows grin.
The bank’s younger staff started to go to the movies en masse at
the end of the week. We started with The Bon re of the Vanities.
This fantastically moving novel of greed and personal morality was
turned into the worst-ever lm about Wall Street you will ever sleep
through.