EDISON, NJ—Noting that it was the sensible thing to do at this point in his life, 27-year-old web designer Jonathan Elridge confirmed Thursday that he puts aside a small percentage of each paycheck for his bank to gamble with. “It’s really important to save money for the future, even if it’s just a little bit each month,” said Elridge, explaining that roughly $80 per pay period is automatically directed into a separate pool of funds that Bank of America proprietary traders use to continuously wage bets on complicated asset-backed securities and opaque financial derivatives with varying levels of risk. “I just want to make sure that over time, I slowly accumulate a significant amount of money that [some extremely well-compensated Wall Street speculators can indiscriminately throw around in what essentially amounts to a massive game of chance, for which they have zero accountability in any way, shape, or form]. Honestly, it’s just common sense.” While spending several minutes filing the paperwork necessary to increase his regular contributions to the fund, Elridge was reportedly unaware that his retirement savings had increased and decreased in value roughly 12,000 times.

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