Sept. 16, 2103
BOSTON–In a paper published recently in the journal Science, MIT Professor Marguerite Fury reports establishing experimentally the existence of ‘anti-money’, a bizarre economic phenomena linked by Professor Fury to a host of hypothesized ‘quantum economic’ processes underlying all matter. “Experimental confirmation of at least one of my theoretical predictions tells me I’m on to something,” notes Professor Fury. “This result will feed my thinking for some time.”
Described by Professor Fury as nearly indistinguishable, co-consuming packets of ‘quantum monies’, anti-money is not the absence of money, but its opposite. Professor Fury explains: “At the scale of everyday economic phenomena, we tend to think of money and debt as complementary opposites, but their opposition is, in fact, quite weak. They actually work in balance to permit the construction of large-scale economic entities. Anti-money is, in contrast, opposed to conventional money at a more fundamental level; whenever money and anti-money come in contact, the two are annihilated, leaving only a consumer residue.”
Because anti-money is annihilated in the presence of its opposite, observation of anti-money required Professor Fury to construct a monetary vacuum. This vacuum, entirely devoid of money, lacked also all traces of debt, because of debt’s close association with ‘positive monetary phenomena’ like interest accrual and periodic payments. And, because of the possible influence of economic processes attached to the observer, Professor Fury herself had to occupy the center of the financial vacuum.
“It’s really quite difficult to rid yourself of all vestiges of economic activity,” notes Fury. “I had to not only discharge all of my own assets and liabilities, but also to disclaim any social benefits my new economic status might entitle me too. Try convincing a government bureaucrat that you don’t want any benefits. It’s not easy. And, on top of that, I had to quit my job. I was almost up for tenure.”
After a number of days spent “wandering in the woods, naked and alone,” Professor Fury returned to the lab and activated a ‘program trading accelerator’ generating within moments billions of ‘wash sales’, or transactions in which offsetting assets are both bought and sold. Though wash sales have little or no positive economic consequence, assets moving at high transaction-velocity generate infrequent ‘friction collisions’ and ‘asset-inversions’ thought to throw off infinitesimal packets of monies and anti-monies.
Though indistinguishable from conventional money, anti-money would, Professor Fury predicted, be observable because of the consumer residue that would remain after the money and anti-money generated by her program trading met and was annihilated.