The Eminence in Finance

This anime is peak satire… It seems like in every single episode Cid is finding a way to cheese the game, not unlike ed edd and eddy or like that streamer that is terrible at dark souls. Season 2 episode 4 was very interesting however because it does make some attempts to explain finance. If i was younger this maybe would have gone over my head as it clearly kinda went over cid’s head. The anime does a surprisingly good job of explaining banking, currency and economics. I was amazed that such a serious topic was covered in such an unserious show 

Fractional Reserve Banking

Fractional reserve banking utilizes a law which dictates that for every dollar loaned by the bank it only has to have 10% in held assets. So for example. If you deposit $100, the bank can legitimately lend or invest up to $90 dollars of it. That’s what Cid is attempting to explain here on the train. Mitsugoshi and other fiat currency  distributors take the gold coins and distribute this paper money in its stead. However this paper is inflationary because they can create more of it than there is the gold coin to back it. So cids accidental master plan is to print lots of fake bank notes and devalue the currency creating a bank run and a 2008 kinda financial crisis. 

I’m surprised at how detailed The Eminence in Finance anime went into the value of fiat currency. When I was a kid we didn’t have any of this in anime, it was just power ups and fights. I had to learn about money as a grown man from graham stephan and jaspreet singh. In the anime, just as in reality the amount of bank notes in circulation exceeds the value of assets held. Leading to the predicted collapse. Cid being accidentally all powerful collected enough gold to ensure that Mitsufgoshi could navigate the economic uncertainty. The relationship between the fiat and the gold in the anime is exactly the same relationship between cash and credit in reality. Banks left the gold standard years ago in our reality but they will gladly offer lines of credit that exceed the value of held cash. 

The Eminence in Finance Economy

Here is the funny shit tho, with all the fake bills that Cid printed, according to intel from shadow garden they only achieved a not a disastrous CPI of 7.2% . To put that into perspective the United states had a CPI of 7% in 2021 and Jamaica had a cpi of 7.5% for 2023. So even with the intentional sabotage the anime’s economy still could not underperform against real economies. Now that is something to reflect on. Thanks for watching , like and subscribe and see you next time.