You are the type of person who considers shopping an interesting intellectual exercise. Family and friends treat you as a walking encyclopedia, which is okay with you. Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time at a garage sale hoping to buy either a T-shirt commemorating Thor Heyerdahl's Pacific crossing aboard the Kon-Tiki or a wall poster commemorating the 2000 Olympics. Be on the lookout for mail order catalogs with hidden messages. You should consider shopping at stores or businesses beginning with the letter C, but do not buy any products with a serial number or product code containing the number 154899. Your preferred shopping venue is the Internet. Your special symbol is the exclamation point (!).

As a Purple Smarphin, you are the brightest and most intelligent person you know. And that goes for shopping, too. You know exactly what you want. You know exactly what it costs. You know exactly when and where to buy. But, of course, shopping is only one of the many activities that attracts your intellectual attention. You shop when you need to and buy if have to, but shopping is not the end all of your life.

The study of the flow of monetary payments and the exchange of currencies among nations undertaken as a necessary complement to the international trading of goods and services. The exchange of currencies takes place through the foreign exchange market, which determines the foreign exchange rate, or exchange rate or one currency for another. The balance of payments documents the flow of currency payments into and out of a given country. A related area of study is international trade, both of which are part of the broader study of international economics.

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Our pedestrian's jaunt through the economy is not, unfortunately, an unrestrained shopping spree for confectioneries, spark plug tools, and Houston, Texas. We have other important errands to run. At the moment we need to hike over to Shady Valley's exclusive provider of cable television services, the Merciless Monolithic Media Masters Cable Television Company, Inc., to inquire about a mysterious fee that appeared last month's bill.

The good news is that the Merciless Monolithic Media Masters (the 4M people) Cable office is a mere 2 miles (3 kilometers for the metrically inclined) from the Shady Valley Central Town Sprawling Hills Shopping Mall. A hop, skip, and a moderately long jump later, our excursion through the economy takes us to the front door of the 4M Cable Television Company where I hope to discover why last month's cable bill included a $3,569 charge for something called "The Vacation Channel." I didn't even know I had a vacation channel. (But, I'm sure it's a great channel, and if I don't have it, then I will certainly subscribe. Please don't disconnect me.)

Of course, because this an afternoon workday, the doors of the 4M office are locked. I can almost make out, through the expensive stained glass windows, what appears to be several Merciless Monolithic Media Masters Cable Television employees, with champaign bottles in hand, dancing on expensive mahogany desks. Let's not disturb them. As they say in the cable business, an upset worker is a disconnected customer.
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