Bank Ad: “Why Pay $3 for Avocado When You Can Pay $30,000 Over 300 Months?”

MANHATTAN – In an exclusive investigation that began with a suspicious receipt folded into a $52 kale smoothie, The Critical Chronicle can confirm that First National FruitBank has rolled out the Avocado Advantage Loan™, a financial product so brazen it makes 2008 look like a church bake sale.

Sources close to the operation—who spoke on condition of anonymity because they’re still amortizing a 2016 croissant—say the program lets consumers finance one Hass avocado at 8.4% APR over 300 months. That’s 25 years. The avocado will fossilize before the ink dries on the promissory note.

FruitBank executives stonewalled requests for comment, but a 52-page pitch deck obtained by this reporter—printed on pressed seaweed—declares the mission: “Turning biodegradable snacks into perpetual revenue streams… for us.”

The launch unfolded Tuesday at a SoHo pop-up christened Guac & Awe, where guests were greeted by a 10-foot robotic avocado named Gus. Gus’s right arm doubles as a loan kiosk; high-five it and you’re instantly approved for $41,000 collateralized by the fruit’s molecular density.

Internal risk models, leaked via a courier wearing a banana suit, factor in a 4% annual “oxidative default rate.” Translation: one brown freckle before month 97 triggers the Mush Penalty Clause, adding $2,700 in “sentimental spoilage surcharges.”

One early borrower, a 31-year-old podcast producer identified only as “Case 12-B,” received his first bill by carrier pigeon. It read: “Payment 1 of 300: $129.63. Balance: $29,996.14. Pit integrity: 98%.” Case 12-B now stores the avocado in a bank-grade humidor previously used for rare baseball cards.

Wall Street’s reaction was swift and unhinged. Shares of FruitBank surged 538% after a rival institution, ButterTrust Corp, teased a Cultured Dairy Debenture, securitizing one pat of European butter over 80 years. Pre-orders are backed by sovereign wealth funds in Qatar. This reporter stress-tested the system by attempting to finance a single raisin. The application was rejected for “inadequate seed-to-liability ratio.”

FruitBank’s head of exotic risk, Dr. Felix P. Rind, addressed reporters in a press release delivered via Morse-code lime wedge: “Perishability is the new immortality.” He then back-flipped into a waiting electric rickshaw. Tucked on page 312 of the contract—between sections on “avocado exorcism protocols” and “default by brunch”—is a rider: upon final repayment, the borrower receives a titanium pit engraved with “Congratulations. You Outlived the Fruit.”

The Critical Chronicle’s back-of-the-napkin math shows the average borrower will pay enough interest to acquire 10,112 additional avocados, or one every lunar eclipse until the sun expands into a red giant. As I file this from a Chelsea diner, the cashier just offered 0% financing on a $9 coffee… over 48 months. I paid with quarters. The avocado toast on the menu averted its gaze.

This is Max Quill, signing off from the corner of finance and farce—where the only thing compounding faster than the debt is the punchline.