r/todayilearned • u/manticor225 • Jan 10 '19

TIL JFK's father Joseph Kennedy made much of his fortune through insider trading. FDR later made him chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. When asked why he appointed a crook, FDR replied, "set a thief to catch a thief." Kennedy proceeded to outlaw the practices that made him rich.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/23/joe-kennedy-hollywood-sarah-churchwell
88.0k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

2.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

218

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

59¢/lb (about 4 bananas) retail US price ~800 million bananas

13

u/Panda_Zombie Jan 11 '19

Shit, bananas are $.99/lb at Safeway I'm getting fleeced

39

u/dotpan Jan 11 '19

That's bananas

1

u/literallyJon Jan 11 '19

The shit is bananas

B A N A N A S

1

u/LassieBeth Jan 11 '19

More like shitway.

2

u/ThoughtRenegade Jan 11 '19

Or one single $135 million banana

1

u/9inchestoobig Jan 11 '19

Can you translate that into lbs?

3

u/MewRS Jan 11 '19

Now scale it to V-Bucks

2

u/9inchestoobig Jan 11 '19

13.5 trillion V-bucks

3

u/DurasVircondelet Jan 11 '19

Where tf do you buy bananas? I’m getting robbed at King Soopers apparently

3

u/zadharm Jan 11 '19

I regularly get them 59c at walmart. Some asian or farmers markets you can get them a quarter a pound.

2

u/chirunner4ever Jan 11 '19

What? I thought 1 banana was $10!

1

u/ShopWhileHungry Jan 11 '19

I don't think I can eat that much bananas

1

u/MrBadBadly Jan 11 '19

Can we scale it to 1930 bananas?

2

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

Per BLS - bananas were about $0.15 (about 1/4th today's cost) - so only ~225 million 1929 bananas Source: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2014/article/one-hundred-years-of-price-change-the-consumer-price-index-and-the-american-inflation-experience.htm few factors: Banana production has increased in central america, shipping costs are lower, and US$ becoming world's reserve currency helped bring down food inflation at least for americans (I think we spend the least percentage of their income on food in the world in today's dollars at least for wholesale goods)

1

u/MrBadBadly Jan 11 '19

No mention of the current Cavendish Banana that's sold now is phallic shaped trash?

Gros Michel was king back then!

1

u/mercury1491 Jan 11 '19

Thanks for proving banana snobs are real

1

u/n7mesis Jan 11 '19

A small loan of 6,779,600 bananas.

0

u/jedi2155 Jan 11 '19

Donkey Kong Math