For the first time in nearly a decade China is issuing new banknotes without the image of Chairman Mao. Instead there's a picture of, you guessed it, their shiny new Olympic stadium. And a discus thrower on the back.
posted on Jul 7, 2008 - View this thread

Many people are up in arms (heh) over the Supreme Court's decision regarding gun control, but rather less press is being given to another opinion handed down today: Davis v. FEC. The issue was the constitutionality of the "Millionaire's Amendment", which allowed for political candidates facing self-funding challengers who intended to spend more than $350,000 to raise more money from individual donors than they would otherwise be allowed to do. In a 5-4 decision, the court found the law unconstitutional.
posted on Jun 26, 2008 - View this thread

The Banyan Tree Foundation promised to take donations from contributors to be redistributed to worthy Canadian recipients. The foundation also gave donors inflated charity receipts for tax declarations, and donors were encouraged to borrow money to contribute even more, and did... from a company now owned by Banyan Tree president Robert Thiessen. Now, the money has stopped flowing, and the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has called the organization a "sham" and is going after Banyan donors for past charity receipts totalling more than CAD$100 million.
posted on Jun 4, 2008 - View this thread

HowISpentMyStimulus.com In January, Congress approved $152 billion in economic stimulus checks for millions of American households, intended to boost the economy and avert a recession. Just how this money will be spent remains to be seen. We hope this website helps shed some light on where the stimulus money is going.
posted on May 31, 2008 - View this thread

Stemming from a lawsuit that has gone on for several years, a recent Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. government must make bills with distinguishable tactile features to benefit the blind. While the U.S. government disagrees, the judges say: "The government might as well argue that, since handicapped people can crawl on all fours or ask for help from strangers, there's no need to make buildings wheelchair accessible." Not all blind people agree with the decision.
posted on May 20, 2008 - View this thread

The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree. "The occupation of Iraq will cost $3 trillion, America's most expensive conflict since WWII. Can YOU spend that money better? Here's your chance to go on a virtual $3 trillion shopping spree and prove it!" [Via Gristmill.]
posted on May 10, 2008 - View this thread

money can't buy happiness? well, actually it might (NYT).
posted on May 5, 2008 - View this thread

Oil's got one. So does cocaine. There used to be one for light bulbs and another for uranium. While we know one currently exists for diamonds, some folks think the music industry has one.
posted on May 5, 2008 - View this thread

Want to live it up at the U.S. party conventions and get access to Senators and Congressmen? USA Today has posted the campaign committee price lists:
Democratic Senate and Congress
Republican Senate and Congress

If you've got the dough, you may conveniently request a convention package online from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The National Republican Congressional Committee and the NRSC have other price lists on their sites, but it seems like the DSCC and DCCC sites keep theirs under wraps.
posted on May 1, 2008 - View this thread

The Pentagon's $1 Trillion Problem. Even as the Defense Department prepares to send Congress its $481.4B FY2008 budget request, it also prepares to admit -- for the 18th year in a row -- that its finances are in such poor shape that it is effectively impossible to audit or account for over a trillion dollars in past expenses.
posted on Apr 16, 2008 - View this thread

Who said anything about a recession? Sometime between the government bailout of Bear Stearns and the Bureau of Labor Statistics report that America lost 80,000 jobs in March, Lee Tachman, a Wall Street banker, spent roughly $50,000 last month on a four-day jaunt to Miami for himself and three close friends.

“It was just all out — it was insane,” said Mr. Tachman. “I’m not afraid to spend money like that.”
posted on Apr 14, 2008 - View this thread

SafetyTat- Temporary tattoos designed designed to be used as identification devices for children. Includes several designs for non-verbal and autistic children. Via That's Fit.
posted on Apr 12, 2008 - View this thread

"Ten Thousand Cents" is a digital artwork that creates a representation of a $100 bill. Using a custom drawing tool, thousands of individuals working in isolation from one another painted a tiny part of the bill without knowledge of the overall task.
posted on Apr 12, 2008 - View this thread

Pay to play. The children of big-donor Harvard alums are systematically given preference over legacy offspring of lesser means. Additionally David Karen, now a professor at Bryn Mawr, concluded that alumni children at Harvard lose most of their admissions advantage if they apply for financial aid.
posted on Apr 7, 2008 - View this thread

Inflation in Zimbabwe recently reached 160,000%. Get in on the ground floor now by purchasing a $50,000,000 bill (currently selling for 20,000x its value). Dare to become a millionaire!
posted on Apr 7, 2008 - View this thread

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 on Mar 28, 2008 - View this thread

Little by little, millions of Americans surrendered equity in their homes in recent years. Lulled by good times, they borrowed — sometimes heavily — against the roofs over their heads.

Now the bill is coming due.
posted on Mar 27, 2008 - View this thread

Rent Vs. Buy Myths That Ruined the Housing Market
posted on Mar 21, 2008 - View this thread

Columbia Business School doesn't like Ben Bernanke. The Previous Link is a Music Video from Columbia Business School. No Billy Joel, but it is a music parody. You might not like music parodies which is A-Okay, but this is a financial focused music parody from a business school improv group. It made me smile wanely a few times, but I still enjoyed it. You might not. I am sorry if you do not. If you don't, maybe you would like a video about munchkin kittens.
posted on Mar 19, 2008 - View this thread

Payback is a b*tch. Former presidential scandal Gennifer Flowers is putting the tapes of her recorded conversations with Bill Clinton -- which she was previously offered $5 million for -- up on the auction block.
posted on Feb 25, 2008 - View this thread

David Horvitz will do things for money.
posted on Feb 24, 2008 - View this thread

According to the latest biweekly numbers released last Thursday by the Federal Reserve, for the two weeks that ended January 16th American banks had negative $1.3 billion in non-borrowed reserves. This is, historically, extremely unusual; just two months ago they had $30 billion (positive, of course) in non-borrowed reserves. The only reason some banks haven't been shut due to insufficient -- negative! -- reserve requirements is that the Federal Reserve is currently loaning them enough money through the brand new TAF (Term Auction Facility) program (also running in Canada and Europe) to make up their shortfalls. Today's TAF press release says that 52 American banks or institutions are currently receiving loans totaling ~$40 billion -- but the Fed refuses to name who they are.
posted on Jan 29, 2008 - View this thread

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.
posted on Jan 22, 2008 - View this thread

50 fun facts about banks.
posted on Jan 16, 2008 - View this thread

Moneygami. Money folded to look like people wearing hats. (Via.)
posted on Dec 16, 2007 - View this thread

Money as Debt. Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated presentation of "Money as Debt" tells in very simple graphic terms what money is and how it is created.
posted on Nov 24, 2007 - View this thread

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush. "The next president will have to deal with yet another crippling legacy of George W. Bush: the economy. A Nobel laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz, sees a generation-long struggle to recoup." [Via Firedoglake.]
posted on Nov 18, 2007 - View this thread

Is the high end Art market finally tanking? A week or so ago, it sure looked like it. An important van Gogh piece did not sell, Sotheby's stock price went into shock. However, all is well this week as both Christie's and Sotheby's kicked it into high gear and set some new records.
posted on Nov 15, 2007 - View this thread

As the Writer's Guild of America strike wears on into its second week, it seems appropriate to remember why they're striking in the first place. If you ask me, the terms seem almost too reasonable. But in the defense of the studios, I'm sure the businessmen involved have gotten used to spending those millions of dollars, and wouldn't want to see them go. Now that Broadway has shut down in allegiance to their Hollywood compatriots, things are looking grim for anything to be resolved without more financial bloodshed.
posted on Nov 10, 2007 - View this thread

Do you know a young 20 something hipster who is too busy spending their parents money on beer, poorly fitting clothes and blogging about the newest band reinventing music from 20 years ago? Is their waiter/bartending existence causing you to worry about their long term investment habits? Do they need some fisical responsbility in their young lives? Well you're in luck my friend! Thrasher Funds now offers the first mutual fund targeted to hipsters. With holdings in Apple, Gucci, H&M, and Louis Vuitton, this fund not only has it's pulse on your young hipster's generation, it also dresses the way they want! Get in on it today! via
posted on Nov 8, 2007 - View this thread

The pound has hit its highest level against the dollar in 26 years.
posted on Oct 30, 2007 - View this thread

A miniature of Scrooge McDuck's money bin. (in the words of the model maker) This is a set of images documenting a model of the world's richest duck's money bin, built by me, using blueprints created by the great Don Rosa and Dan Shane.And remember Carl Barks - the mind behind the idea of a man storing all his money in a giant concrete bin.
posted on Oct 25, 2007 - View this thread

What is the most important antipoverty program in the world? The surprising answer is remittances, the earnings sent from overseas workers back home - which, according to a new study, totals over $300 billion a year. There is an interactive map that shows you the impact per country: over 10% of the GDP of economies such as Morocco, Jordan, and the Philippines comes from these payments, which are often the largest source of investment for most developing countries. The New York Times has a neat feature showing how global migration and remittances are tied together.
posted on Oct 17, 2007 - View this thread

Stephen Barnwell makes meticulous bills for fictional worlds, such as the Dream Dollars of a lost Antarctic colony, complete with symbolism and backstories. He has introduced several new, more politically controversial fictional currencies for less ideal worlds: the United States of Islam, the State of War, and the Empire of America. He is not the only artist who imagines currency, there are the beautiful notes of Kamberra and the strange work of JSG Boggs [prev] who hand-draws almost real bills that subvert the lines between money and art, occasionally running into issues with the Secret Service on the way. On the borders between reality and fantasy is the new currency developed by foreign exchange specialists Travelex, the Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination, introduced to solve some of the problems in money in space, and which may actually be used by space tourists. [prev.]
posted on Oct 16, 2007 - View this thread

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.
posted on Oct 16, 2007 - View this thread

I Can Get Your Kid into an Ivy. A look at the practices of college admission consultant Michele Hernandez, who boasts a 95% acceptance rate for fees of up to $40, 000.
posted on Oct 15, 2007 - View this thread

Billions over Baghdad. "Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency—much of it belonging to the Iraqi people—was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad, where it was dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Some of the cash went to pay for projects and keep ministries afloat, but, incredibly, at least $9 billion has gone missing, unaccounted for, in a frenzy of mismanagement and greed. Following a trail that leads from a safe in one of Saddam's palaces to a house near San Diego, to a P.O. box in the Bahamas, the authors discover just how little anyone cared about how the money was handled."
posted on Sep 27, 2007 - View this thread

Watch the K Foundation burn a million quid. Google Video link to the full documentary, skip to 13:30 for the "money shot".
posted on Sep 22, 2007 - View this thread

On Tuesday, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 0.5%. Wall Street aggressively demanded the cut to stop the sub-prime mortgage contagion from triggering a credit crisis among large US and foreign investment banks and the collapse of their over-leveraged hedge funds, which ultimately threatened to drag the US economy into recession. The market rallied this week in response to the Fed's move. But there is no free lunch.
posted on Sep 20, 2007 - View this thread

Parity - The Canadian Dollar is (almost) at equal value to the American Dollar for the first time since 1976.
posted on Sep 20, 2007 - View this thread

Please Columbia Don't Kill My Wife
posted on Sep 3, 2007 - View this thread

Man buys Allsop, relists it as Allsopp - proving that on eBay, presentation is everything. via b3ta
posted on Aug 31, 2007 - View this thread

A fairly lucid description of recent actions of the Federal Reserve.
posted on Aug 17, 2007 - View this thread

Is there a link between donations given and bills passed? MAPLight.org aims to help you find out, giving you the ability to compare contributions with how legislators voted. [Via]
posted on Aug 15, 2007 - View this thread

25 Anonymous Money Confessions A photo essay courtesy of the Personal Finance Advice blog.
posted on Aug 7, 2007 - View this thread

In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don't Feel Rich [NYTimes Link] Mr. Kremen estimated his net worth at $10 million. That puts him firmly in the top half of 1 percent among Americans, according to wealth data from the Federal Reserve, but barely in the top echelons in affluent towns like Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Atherton. So he logs 60- to 80-hour workweeks because, he said, he does not think he has nearly enough money to ease up.
posted on Aug 5, 2007 - View this thread

Australian art student Nicholas Manion has hit upon a clever idea: delicately cut paper currency forming the skyline of major cities. Via.
posted on Aug 3, 2007 - View this thread

Online coin generator. Sure, it's in German, but you can figure it out.
posted on Aug 1, 2007 - View this thread

Dear Friend, I am a Swiss Banker currently in possession of over $ 1 Billion in funds stashed away by the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of the Congo. Our Swiss Confederation President Micheline Calmy-Rey said her government is holding just $6.6m frozen in accounts. "We discussed the question of Mobutu's funds and my government is prepared to restore the money to the DR Congo as soon as possible," Ms Rey told reporters in the DR Congo capital, Kinshasa, after talks with Mr Kabila. But we can help you get the rest of the 92.4 million dollars if you will just send us your bank account number and call to confirm your ID and pin number.
posted on Jul 17, 2007 - View this thread

The "same people who attacked us on 9/11"? It may be the very latest talking point from the Administration, but it's actually true--altho it's not Al Qaeda in Iraq, but Saudis. Although Bush administration officials have frequently lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping insurgents and militias here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from a third neighbor, Saudi Arabia ... A historical note: 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis.
posted on Jul 16, 2007 - View this thread