"The Banker in the Monopoly Game"

Most Americans have undoubtedly heard of the game "Monopoly," * and most likely, a lot of those folks have even played the game. Usually one of the players acts as the banker. The bank initially holds the title to the various properties and the banker collects all fees and such, and pays out money according to the various rules of the game. The banker is supposed to keep his/her personal money and properties (as a player) separate from those of the bank. According to the rules, the bank can never go broke; sort of a forerunner of "too big to fail." The game began to grow in popularity back during the time of the Great Depression, when banks and big businesses were under scrutiny for regulation, following the financial and economic meltdown begun by the Great Crash of the stock market in October of 1929.

In order to bring the game up to date and to make it more realistic, the rules need to change so that the banker never has to go to jail, even if he/she mixes the banks funds and properties in with their own. Further, the banker should be able to pay themselves whatever bonuses they want. If the banker gets into financial difficulty, regardless of how irresponsibly he/she has acted, the other players have to contribute "bailout money" to keep the banker going. This "bailout money" is technically a loan, but it is given with no strings attached to the banker's management of his/her personal, I mean, bank funds ... well, it's difficult to tell exactly what this should mean. And remember, unlike the other players, the banker NEVER goes to jail. Have fun ......

* The game was owned and distributed for decades by Parker Brothers, which became a part of "Hasbro" in the early 1990s, along with "Monopoly."

WORD HISTORY:
Need-This word goes back to Indo European "nau/naw," which had the idea of "corpse," which then expanded to "brought to exhaustion" (as in, "dead tired"). This gave its Old Germanic offspring "nauthiz," which had the broad meaning "distress, difficulty, hardship, necessity, force." This then gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "nied/ned," with many of the same meanings. This then became "nede," before the modern version, although the meaning narrowed to "a necessity, a requirement, poverty (that is, 'lack of necessities').^ A verb form goes back to Old Germanic times, which carried into Old English and the other Germanic languages, as well, all from the same source. The other Germanic languages have: German "Not" (pronounced much like "note," but besides meaning "necessity," the German word also means "distress" and "emergency"), Low German "Noot" (poverty, distress), Dutch "noot" (need, distress), Danish "nød" (need, distress), Norwegian "nød," (need, emergency), Icelandic "nauð"and "neyð" (=nauth and neyth, meaning 'emergency, distress'), "Swedish "nöd" (need, distress). I could not find a modern form in Frisian, but it is a difficult language to research and there could well be a modern form, as it once had "ned."

^ English borrowed words for some of the other, previous meanings of "need": "distress," "requirement" and "poverty," all are Latin derived words that gradually left "need" with its more limited meaning in modern times.