I think it’s appropriate to say they made a stupid mistake and move on.
The author is likely a little frustrated so I can forgive their shade throwing at treasury.
He’s lucky to get 1% return on a high yield savings so he lost 1/12 = .08%/month so if it takes two months for a refund he lost $16.66 in interest from where he has it parked. My bank’s high yield interest only returns .05% so if I had acted stupidly and made the same mistake I would have missed out on 83 cents for the two months.
So he’s lucky it’s not a very expensive mistake.
To match inflation, all one has to do is to buy nonperishable components of the CPI: fuel, real estate (through a REIT), food, commodities, and so on.
If banking can't keep up with that, it speaks volumes about the competence of the financial system.
Savings accounts haven’t kept up with inflation for as long as I remember. So anyone with cash has plugged it into stuff other than mma. I think that’s why these Ibonds are so popular now.