The Bank That Only Takes Cheese

This bank only takes cheese. Send this to whoever thinks banking cannot get stranger. In the hills of northern Italy, a bank keeps a vault holding more than half a million wheels of cheese.

Ta banka sprejema samo sir. Pošlji to vsakomur, ki misli, da bančništvo ne more biti bolj nenavadno. V hribih severne Italije ima banka trezor, v katerem je več kot pol milijona hlebcev sira.

The cheese is Parmigiano Reggiano, and it belongs to local dairy farmers. Instead of waiting years for the cheese to age and sell, farmers hand their wheels straight to the bank as collateral for a loan, and the bank pays them a large share of the value right away.

Sir je Parmigiano Reggiano in pripada lokalnim kmetom. Namesto da bi leta čakali, da sir dozori in se proda, kmetje hlebce izročijo kar banki kot zavarovanje za posojilo, banka pa jim takoj izplača velik del vrednosti.

While the loan runs, the bank stores and ages the wheels itself, checking each one and rotating them like a library of cheese. When the cheese finally sells at full price, the farmer settles the loan, and the whole system starts again with the next harvest.

Dokler posojilo teče, banka hlebce sama skladišči in stara, vsakega pregleda in jih obrača kot knjižnico sira. Ko se sir končno proda po polni ceni, kmet poravna posojilo in ves sistem se z naslednjo letino začne znova.