OpEd: Is It the End of the World As We Know It?

If you’ve ever wondered what banking in a post-apocalyptic America might look like, look no further than the bacon barter and the ice cream bank. Who needs money when you have bacon and ice cream? Late last week the Wall Street Journal reported about the owner of an ice-cream parlor who opened a community-bank alternative that pays interest in the form of gift cards for ice cream, waffles and coffee. Not to be outdone in the category for best bank alternatives, Yahoo! reported on Oscar Meyer and comedian Josh Sankey’s joint efforts to barter his way across the country using nothing but bacon as currency to obtain gas, lodging, food and everything else he'll need along the way.

Personally, with yields on an ice cream bank account being higher than my current rate…I’ll take a pistachio waffle cone please. In this twilight zone, it seems the vegetarians and lactose intolerant will suffer the worst fate. I can only hope that in the rapidly-converging world of payments technology nobody seeks to unite these two concepts—somehow bacon ice cream lacks the appeal of either of the main ingredients.