Lions are once again the only animals buying bonds during the biggest bull market of the century. Starting May 1, I bonds will pay 16%. Currently, they pay 7%.

The interest rate is updated in December & May. It's the federal funds rate at time of purchase + a variable rate which is 2x the last 6 months of inflation. On May 1, the federal funds rate will be 0 & the inflation rate will be 8%. They can't be sold for 1 year. If sold before 5 years, you lose the last 3 months of interest. All the interest is taxed at the federal level but not state level.

A maximum of $10,000 can be bought per year. The lion kingdom suspects the interest rate boost in May will be short lived & it will trend back to 0 over the bond's lifetime, as inflation works its way back to just asset prices. Having said that, there's also a good chance the government is willing to live with reporting double digit inflation for a long time. Waiting 6 months for the next interest rate boost costs you the interest of the last 6 months. The best strategy is to buy all $10000 in the 1st May or Dec after becoming eligible.

A lion could imagine a scenario where someone buys the $10,000 maximum in I bonds every year, even when no interest is paid. Then when hyper inflation strikes, they make $16,000 on $100,000. It's sort of a gamble that the government will eventually report inflation higher than any other investment. After 1 year though, they could still recover all the principle in an emergency.

For most of the last 20 years, the government reported little to no inflation & I bonds paid nothing, so these bonds would have done worse than even CD's. The current inflation episode is the 1st in a lifetime & it has an equal chance of being a flash in the pants or becoming the new normal.

For heaven's sake, don't buy in April & November during a bull market, but it's not the end of the world as the variable rate will be updated in 6 months. The interest rate stays fixed for 6 months from the time of purchase. Fortunately, there is a short window in which you can delete pending purchases.

20 years after generation X made borrowing money the definition of coolness, millennials have crushed household debt. Part of the reason is aggressive retail investing after 2016 & the quantitative easing miracle continuing for a 2nd decade. Millennials also don't believe in mortgages. Buying houses in cash which was unheard of 20 years ago is now the norm. A big motivation might have been their experience with student loans & watching their parents get crushed by that brief period of underwater mortgages.

On the 1 paw, lack of debt allows the fed to raise interest rates higher without crushing the economy, but lack of demand for credit also means less power to charge higher interest for it.

History may show generation X paid off the debt that baby boomers created, whether it was by losing all their money to inflation or by short selling their houses in 2009. Inflation has reset generation Z's debt to income ratio back to 1992. Their salaries are 1/4 of housing prices instead of 1/10 like 20 years ago.

A fellow unknown gootuber with no views & who doesn't seem to be worth $10 million. They're getting rarer & rarer. The diminishing views over the last 10 years show how the gootube has laser focused on heavily produced content that makes the most money instead of ad hoc videos which contribute nothing to their bottom line.

The lion kingdom only got recommended this channel from a timelapse video. He seems to have the camera strapped to a baby stroller. It made lions realize how hard it was to go from that to a self propelled camera system with machine vision. The niggles get all the attention, but controlling it & making it reliable were a big deal.

Trophy wife

Lion kingdom aqueduct during construction.

Scheduled to be demolished in the 2030's & replaced by a larger underground pipe with 70% more area. Obviously not benefiting from any of the last 20 years of infrastructure plans. #1 was built in 1929. #2 was built in the 1940's. #3 was built in the 1960's.

Interestingly, the soil under the pipes has compacted due to centuries of farming. Oxidization of the peat moss & wind erosion rather than ground water are the explanation. The levees protecting the aqueducts were built by poor farmers centuries ago & aren't up to the task of protecting the infrastructure.