Easy Money III

"Bank error in your favor: Collect $200." That was a card you could draw from the Community Chest pile in Monopoly. Of course these days the idea of getting anything back from a bank, let alone a paltry two hundred dollars seems like a pittance. I would assume that if you found yourself on the receiving end of such a "gift," you would probably end up owing at least that much in processing fees and possible penalties. Meanwhile, the confusion over whether or not you could still go to jail when you played the game is seemingly resolved. There will still be a "Go To Jail" space on Monopoly boards, even if you can't go there with your token iron. You'll have to be satisfied with your newly added kitty.
And what about collecting rent while you're in jail? Or the money in Free Parking? What about that? As it turns out, it doesn't really matter. Instead, we might want to start worrying about the rules of the banking system in the world outside of Parker Brothers. Remember a few years back when Goldman Sachs paid five hundred and fifty million dollars in fines for its part in the sub-prime mortgage fiasco? As it turns out, that hefty penalty amounted to a solid drop in the billions of gold-plated buckets at Goldman Sachs. As for going to jail, well, these folks don't seem to have to worry about such things much if at all, and if you happen to own entire city blocks, free parking is pretty much implied.
So how can we hope to get rich quick? We could play the lottery, but as I heard one radio personality complaining the other day on his show that the California Lottery was only worth ten million dollars. If you wanted the big money, you needed to be playing Powerball. That's for the people who want to take a risk, or wait for their chance to be handed a few million dollars just because you happen to have the name that's printed on the oversized check that the casino is handing out.
Or you can keep making trips around the board, collecting two hundred dollars each time you pass Go.