Chext is a site that enables the user to enter transactions and track their bank balance via SMS. People sharing a bank account can also get updates when money is spent from the account by the other person.
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posted by reenum
on Sep 19, 2011 -
30 comments
In
an investment manager's view on the top 1% - referring to the richest Americans by wealth and income - we learn that one needs $1.2 million in net worth to barely slip in the door of the top 1%. But that's just a start: the real power and influence in the U.S., the author argues, resides in the top 0.1%. You can guess who you'll find there: bankers and large-cap CEOs. Relevant quotes include...
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posted by mark7570
on Aug 4, 2011 -
115 comments
Out of thin air? "Have you ever said something like 'Let me buy you a beer next week'? I'm sure you have. We all issue promises of this sort. And we frequently use such promises as a form of currency... I have just described a simple credit exchange. Societies rely heavily on promising-making and promise-keeping. It is the foundation of all financial markets. I'd like to point out something about the promises you make. They are made 'out of thin air.' "
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posted by kliuless
on Apr 14, 2011 -
47 comments
"The plan was money. The architect was money. The designer was money and the builder was money. And if you ever wondered what money would look like if it were left to its own devices,
it's Dubai."
posted by vidur
on Mar 13, 2011 -
69 comments
"What happened here in Jefferson County would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for the peculiar alchemy of modern oligarchical capitalism: A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human shit into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street" - "
Looting Main Street" Matt Taibbi takes an in-depth look into how finance, deregulation, corruption, synthetic rate swaps, and greed decimated Birmingham, AL.
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posted by The Whelk
on Apr 12, 2010 -
42 comments
Adnan Khashoggi was one of the high society news makers in the 80's, considered by some to be on Donald Trump's level. While things have gone alright for the Donald, Khashoggi hasn't done as well...
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posted by reenum
on Dec 14, 2009 -
19 comments
Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, says:
If the goal was to increase lending, well we haven't increased lending. ... Banks that were too big to fail are bigger than ever. ... When TARP was announced, the whole purpose was a statement that we're not going to let our large financial instiutions fail. And with that I think we may be in a far more dangerous place today than we were a year ago.
(via)
posted by Joe Beese
on Sep 26, 2009 -
15 comments
Standard & Poor’s changed the
UK's credit outlook from stable to negative a few days ago, and warned that there is a chance the UK could lose its AAA rating. Meanwhile, Moodys, another of the
big 3 rating agencies, has warned that
the US might also eventually lose its AAA rating. The UK announcement
caused sterling to drop by 1% and the FTSE by 2%. However,
many blame the same rating agencies for their part in
triggering the subprime crisis. The irony of this is not lost on the
Wall Street Journal, who note that "After all, those governments are jacking up spending, in part, to bail out the financial firms who gobbled up those 'AAA' asset backed securities duly blessed by the credit ratings firms."
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posted by memebake
on May 26, 2009 -
38 comments
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank gave a bank, whose capital ratio equaled only 1.88% of assets at the bank, versus a desired level of about 6%, TARP money after heavy lobbying. Frank
inserted into the bill a provision to give special consideration to banks that had less than $1 billion of assets, had been well-capitalized as of June 30, served low- and moderate-income areas, and had taken a capital hit in the federal seizure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (WSJ link) [more inside]
posted by SeizeTheDay
on Jan 22, 2009 -
92 comments
TARP, SSFIP, EESA, CPP, TALF, MMIFF... Are you feeling overwhelmed by all the new acronyms coming out of the US Treasury Department lately? Here's
a handy PDF reference guide to untangling the US government efforts to rescue banks, financial corporations, and other companies.
posted by Asparagirl
on Dec 29, 2008 -
10 comments
Confused about what caused this whole credit crisis? Let me Paddy Hirsch from Marketplace explain it to you in
this surprisingly entertaining and easy to understand video. While you're there, check out his
explanation of short selling and
credit default swaps. I wish this guy was my finance professor.
posted by JPowers
on Oct 23, 2008 -
23 comments
We already
talked (self-link, sorta) about
Zeitgeist: The Movie. Its author, Peter Joseph, recently released
Zeitgeist: Addendum. (beware: last two links are two hour movies) This time, it’s about money and debt, scarcity and resources. The first, financial part may look like an extended
Ron Paul ad, but then there’s a sudden turn towards resource-based utopian techno-communalism, and an endorsement for
The Venus project. It seems to me like "Kropotkinian anarchism meets The Matrix". In these
rough times, is it time for a big leap? [Also announced:
The Zeitgeist Movement, still not active]
posted by Baldons
on Oct 7, 2008 -
21 comments
The Most Important Article You Did Not Read This Week Now, it is true that the most important article you probably didn’t read contains all the usual hair-raising things you’d expect to see about the real estate market, including “developers under siege,” “signs of weakness in key markets,” developers “slashing prices,” and the head of a major builder advising “that people wait three to four years before purchasing a new home.” But the most important article you probably didn’t read is not about real estate markets in Naples, Florida, or Sacramento, California.
It is about China. [ full WSJ article here]
posted by Stynxno
on Mar 28, 2008 -
43 comments
While the US equities markets were closed on Monday for Martin Luther King Day, stock markets around the world took a nosedive,
losing billions in equity; the markets in
Australia,
South Korea,
Japan,
China,
Indonesia, Hong Kong,
Germany,
France,
the UK, and
more countries have dropped at least 5% each (
Canada only fell 4.75%), even though most of those markets had already been seriously down for several days prior.
India has been hit particularly hard, at one point down a whopping 11%, tripping their markets' automatic
"circuit breakers" for a mandatory time-out period, before scraping back up to close at
8% down. US futures markets are
currently predicting a 650+ point drop just at the open Tuesday morning, before even a single trade goes through.
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posted by Asparagirl
on Jan 22, 2008 -
306 comments
At a time when fed-up American citizens are
petitioning Congress to end the imprudent financial practices that caused the
housing bubble sub-prime mortgage crisis liquidity crisis impending recession -- including the banning of
SIV's and
refusing any bailouts for Wall Street, banks, or mortgage companies -- the United States Treasury Department
has just announced the creation of a giant-mega-ultra SIV called "M-LEC" made up of assets from several of the largest American banks. Already unofficially nicknamed "Sivie Mae" (or worse,
"the Frankenstein Fund"), it would be an off-balance-sheet way for these banks to pool and price the
ABCP's that they've lately been having trouble pricing and thus selling -- i.e. the liquidity crisis.
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posted by Asparagirl
on Oct 16, 2007 -
82 comments
Want to learn about investing? Morningstar, an independent investment researcher, is offering 172 free online "classes" on stocks, bonds, funds, and portfolio building. And there's nifty quizzes at the end of each lesson where you can earn points that can be used for Morningstar products.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero
on Jan 9, 2007 -
20 comments
Get Rich Slowly, a personal finance web site (created by our
jdroth), has been educational to someone who spent most of his life until now pretending financial matters don't exist. His blog is updated frequently, and contains insightful tips on living frugally, eliminating debt, saving and investing. Between his site, and another very educational site entitled
I Will Teach You To Be Rich (start
here), I've greatly expanded my knowledge about managing my money effectively. Perhaps most importantly, they're both consistently interesting and easy reads.
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posted by knave
on Aug 1, 2006 -
73 comments
BillMonk is a new way of tracking informal debts with your friends. Web 2.0 nonsense or a viable solution to those awkward 13-way restaurant bills? Not to be confused with
Zopa, another social money project...
posted by runkelfinker
on Jan 23, 2006 -
24 comments
The Forbes Fictional 15 -- it is list season, after all--the usual suspects, and some new entries. Daddy Warbucks (Net Worth: $27.3 billion, attended SUNY Stony Brook) gets this:
Iraqi conflict has been kind to Warbucks; recipient of multiple defense contracts; cat-food holdings also up.
posted by amberglow
on Dec 5, 2005 -
49 comments
Leonard Cohen is broke. The legendary singer's manager allegedly helped herself to more than $5 million of Cohen's savings while he was busy training as a Buddhist monk. Cohen's manager also convinced him to sell his back catalogue and continuing royalties—profits from both sales were allegedly taken by the same manager.
At the age of 70, Cohen's retirement savings have been depleted to under $150,000 and he is being forced to return to full-time touring and recording.
posted by huskerdont
on Sep 5, 2005 -
67 comments
An unexpected side effect of iTunes. Remember
Bowie Bonds? Introduced in 1997, bonds tied to future profits of music artists (besides Bowie, James Brown and the Isley Brothers offered them) tanked with the advent of online filesharing. Thanks to iTunes, some on Wall Street are betting that the Bowie Bond is a concept with a future.
posted by me3dia
on Aug 23, 2005 -
16 comments
MoneyChimp - a "coherent, logical, useful and accessible financial education resource".
posted by daksya
on Jun 9, 2005 -
4 comments
Your Check Won't Float As of Thursday, October 28, "floating" checks will become a thing of the past. Be forewarned or stand by for major insufficient funds fees on your accounts. More info inside.
posted by Pressed Rat
on Oct 26, 2004 -
71 comments
My name is Rod and I can't handle Money. "You see, I never open my bank statements, ever. My only point of contact with my bank is through the ATM next door to the estate agents in Warminster. Even here, I never knowingly press that button which tells you what your balance is, and if I press it by mistake I screw shut my eyes." This is me. Is it you? What's
wrong with us? Chrometophobes unite.
posted by grahamwell
on Apr 2, 2003 -
74 comments
How to survive in London on £7,000 a year: I'd love to be rich, but it is so expensive. Only joking. Spending big money and accumulating material possessions has never interested me. I don't need retail therapy to cheer me up: my desires are focused elsewhere - in social justice and human rights.
Via
Nutlog.
posted by ryanshepard
on Feb 6, 2002 -
16 comments
