MetaFilter posts tagged with money

Commie Ball

reenum — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:08:05 -0800

Cuban players have long been a mainstay in baseball. After Fidel Castro made it impossible for people to leave the island, the flow of players stopped to a drip. That changed with the defection of Rene Arocha in 1991. The potential to make big money has led to more defections. Joe Cubas is the most prominent agent working with these players. Michael Lewis recently wrote a great article in Vanity Fair about the lives of baseball players in Cuba and looks at the saga of defector Yuniesky Betancourt and his agent, Gus Dominguez. Players are still defecting.

The Curious Case of Matt Harrington

reenum — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:24:45 -0800

When people think of the pitfalls of the baseball draft, it is hard not to remember the story of Matt Harrington. Harrington was drafted in the first round of the MLB draft by the Rockies and the Padres in successive years, only to go back into the draft after failing to reach an agreement each time. As the years went by, his stock kept falling. Harrington's flirtation with the majors ended in 2004 when he was drafted with the 1,089th pick by the Yankees. Joe Posnanski wrote about Harrington's saga in 2006, saying that this was a parable about athlete greed. ESPN wrote a piece about it earlier this year, showing Harrington's rapid decline in draft position and struggles as a result of the negative publicity he received. Harrington currently works at Costco for $11.50 an hour.

Nails Goes to Wall Street

reenum — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:54:21 -0800

Lenny Dykstra was lauded for his heroics with the Mets and Philles. After his career, Dykstra became well-known as a post-career athlete success story. Then the truth started coming out... Dykstra's post career exploits included making stock picks and starting a high end magazine targeted towards athletes. Then, in April of this year, it all came crashing down. In separate articles from GQ and ESPN, Dykstra's financial empire was revealed to be a house of cards. Dykstra subsequently filed bankruptcy in July. For a copy of Lenny's petition, you can go here (Warning: This link is a PDF). Lenny only sees these events as a minor speedbump, and promises to be back on top in no time.

Use the $2, Track the $2, $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100

MrBCID — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 12:28:06 -0800

Use the ($2) Two / Track the ($2) Two (and the $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100) One site is dedicated to spreading the $2 bill, the other is dedicated to tracking it (and other denominations too). Two Dollar Bills Considered Unlucky? Every Tuesday is TWOsday!

Design with Currency

Atreides — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:21:14 -0800

"If the Swiss can do it on a regular basis, why can't we North Americans too." The Dollar ReDe$ign Project believes its time for the United States to switch from the old to something new in the field of American currency. As a result, a contest was developed and submissions accepted. They range from the cultural to the cynical, and a salute to American space achievements to update designs to the present content.

Neil Barofsky reviews TARP

Joe Beese — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:30:10 -0800

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)

Debt, slavery, and violence in history

languagehat — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 07:31:45 -0800

Debt: The first five thousand years. Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber (previously) writes about "debt and debt money in human history" in Eurozine. Lots of thought-provoking stuff here; I'll put a sample in the extended description. (Via wood s lot.)

Commodity money, particularly in the form of gold and silver, is distinguished from credit money most of all by one spectacular feature: it can be stolen. Since an ingot of gold or silver is an object without a pedigree, throughout much of history bullion has served the same role as the contemporary drug dealer's suitcase full of dollar bills, as an object without a history that will be accepted in exchange for other valuables just about anywhere, with no questions asked. As a result, one can see the last 5 000 years of human history as the history of a kind of alternation. Credit systems seem to arise, and to become dominant, in periods of relative social peace, across networks of trust, whether created by states or, in most periods, transnational institutions, whilst precious metals replace them in periods characterised by widespread plunder. Predatory lending systems certainly exist at every period, but they seem to have had the most damaging effects in periods when money was most easily convertible into cash.

How Could This Happen to Annie Leibovitz?

chunking express — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:03:40 -0800

How Could This Happen to Annie Leibovitz? "This" being broke-ass-broke. More or less.

Berkshares

kliuless — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 05:56:38 -0800

The Goat Who Took on the Fed: WSJ's Andy Jordan spends time in the Berkshires to see how locals make the case for "slow money" with their own local currency, "The Berkshare". (previously 1 2 3 4) cf. George Dyson on Exchequer Tallies

As early as the twelfth century it was realized that money, like information but unlike material objects, can be made to exist in more than one place at a single time. An early embodiment of this principle, preceding the Bank of England by more than five hundred years, were Exchequer tallies — notched wooden sticks issued as receipts for money deposited with the Exchequer for the use of the king... Until the Restoration tallies did not bear interest, but in 1660, on the accession of Charles II, interest-bearing tallies were introduced. They were accompanied by written orders of loan which, being made assignable by endorsement, became the first negotiable interest-bearing securities in the English-speaking world. Under pressure of spiraling government expenditures the order of loan was soon joined by an instrument called an order of the Exchequer, drawn not against actual holdings but against future revenue and sold at a discount to the private goldsmith bankers whose hard currency was needed to prop things up. In January 1672, unable to meet its obligations, Charles II declared a stop on the Exchequer. At the expense of the private bankers, this first experiment with derivative financial instruments came to an end. Today's Exchequer, distributed across the global banking network, splits digital tallies by the millions in milliseconds: above human scale in magnitude and beyond human scale in time. High-speed trading programs not only have access to unlimited funding; by dividing time into ever-smaller increments they also, effectively, have access to unlimited time, and, in the words of Ampère, "must then be considered as a single opponent whose fortune is infinite." Can this be stopped? Financial systems exhibit the Gödelian incompleteness characteristic of all sufficiently powerful formal systems: within the given system it is possible to construct statements (or financial instruments) whose value appears to be sound, but cannot be proved within the system itself. No financial system can ever be completely secure and closed. There is no limit to the level of concepts (including fraudulent ones) that an economy is able to comprehend. The system depends on trust. [...] Establishing a bank requires secure information storage to keep accounts, a license from the government (or an entity beyond government), a small amount of capital, and a large amount of trust... We should be less concerned with loss of money and more concerned with loss of trust. If we have to start over with more trust and less money, is this really so bad? ... Charles II had the right idea. He trusted (and endowed) the small group of oddballs who were forming the Royal Society, and put a stop on the Exchequer. If he had rescued the bankers, and ignored William Petty's band of Natural Philosophers, where would we be now?

BONUS

Replacing Scarcity with Trust - Francis Ayley established over a dozen local currencies in the UK before moving to the U.S. He contrasts our standard, scarcity- and debt-based money system with local currencies in which "there's always as much as you need."[1]
Money Monopoly - Marshall Auerback says California is challenging the federal monopoly on money creation: "In effect, what you have is a state of the union creating a sovereign currency right under the noses of Treasury, Fed."
Wealth Inequality - Wolff provides a chart of the share of marketable wealth held by the top percentile in the UK, Sweden, and the US, from 1920 to 1992. The graph is striking: we are roughly back to where we were in 1920 when it comes to wealth inequalities in the United States.[2]
Geithner vs Geithner - If Timothy Geithner is as bad at handling the economy as he is at picking bathroom tiles, he won't need to sell his house.
Alain de Botton on Success and Failure - A kinder, gentler philosophy of success: He makes an eloquent, witty case to move beyond snobbery to find true pleasure in our work.[3]
~~Money~~Monkey Herding Goats - A monkey in India has learned, without any training or supervision, to tend herds of goats, cooperating with a human farmer. Even more amazing: It's a formerly wild monkey who is free to return to the wild at any time.
Pet cat catches the daily bus for four years - "Casper is quite quick for his age so he just hops on to the bus before the doors close. He catches the 10.55am service and likes to sit on the back seat." A spokeswoman for First Bus said the firm has put a notice up in the office asking them to look after the non-paying passenger.[4]

--- [1] Building a Better (Secular) 'Religion' [2] The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class [3] Help a Fellow Out [4] your leisure is my pleasure

Money, Get Away.

william_boot — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:46:36 -0800

Nine years ago, in the autumn of 2000, Daniel Suelo decided to stop using money. He just quit it, like a bad drug habit. Suelo's Blog, Living Without Money. Suelo's website, Zero Currency. All this via Kottke. Oh, and just because you'll want to know.

Meeting Ticker

nthdegx — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:34:12 -0800

Meeting Ticker -- if this helps shorten even one meeting by one minute, it'll have been worth it.

Financial innovation, you say?

vivelame — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:36:15 -0800

Madness is doing the exact same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (SLBP)

The Great American Bubble Machine

philip-random — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:32:11 -0800

"The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." Matt Taibbi vs Goldman Sachs. “What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain -- an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.” previously.

Are those $100's in your wallet or are you just happy to see me?

zinfandel — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:32:57 -0800

When Money Buys Happiness. List the ten most expensive things (products, services or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars, university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever bought that gave you the most happiness. Count how many items appear on both lists. Maybe money can buy happiness, Mack Metcalf notwithstanding. (Previously. Via.)

All About the Benjamins.

grapefruitmoon — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:39:19 -0800

Mark Wagner makes money into art.

UK and USA might lose AAA rating

memebake — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:11:41 -0800

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." How did the CDO's get AAA rated in the first place? There are reports that it may have been a bug in the rating software, although Greenspan says its because the ratings were based on only the last two decades, giving a too-optimistic outlook. This reseach paper by Vasiliki Skreta and Laura Veldkamp looks through some of the options. Incidentally, all the ratings given by the rating agencies come with a disclaimer: S&P says in small print: "Any user of the information contained herein should not rely on any credit rating or other opinion contained herein in making any investment decision". Joseph Mason, a former economist at the US Treasury Department, points out that "The ratings giveth and the disclaimer takes it away."

You have to be rich to be poor

desjardins — Tue, 19 May 2009 08:38:57 -0800

The High Cost of Poverty : The Washington Post explores why the cost of living is proportionately higher in poor areas. Double Jeopardy: Why the Poor Pay More (pdf): a report on payday loans, the cost of homeownership, medical debt, and banking in poor communities.

I'd buy that for a $1M

Brandon Blatcher — Sat, 16 May 2009 19:55:51 -0800

Maybe you shouldn't buy that.

Sir Allen Stanford, the Ponzi artist

Gyan — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:27:14 -0800

The Dark Knight - On Sir Allen Stanford

The Copper Standard

bigmusic — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:30:41 -0800

The new monetary standard: Copper.

Not everyone is Magic Johnson

ThePinkSuperhero — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 10:42:26 -0800

How (and Why) Athletes Go Broke By the time they have been retired for two years, 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness or divorce.

Everything Costs Something

netbros — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:22:32 -0800

What It Costs provides information on the costs associated with a wide variety of services and concepts. Whether you want to know the price range of practical activities — such as what it costs to replace a kitchen countertop, building a nuclear aircraft carrier — or are interested in unusual articles — such as the cost to build Fenway Park, being cryogenically frozen or cleaning up a murder scene — you will find all this and much more.

All The Best People.

The Whelk — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 07:33:47 -0800

Indeed, all three of Hitler’s prized leather whips were presents from high society ladies. : Christopher Clark reviews High Society in the Third Reich by Fabrice d’Almeida in the London Review Of Books.

Renewing the economics of theatre

divabat — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:11:28 -0800

The recession has hit the theatre world (and the arts scene in general) very hard - but some argue that theatre practitioners aren't doing themselves any favours when seeking funding. The main question insufficiently addressed is "who is the funding for?" - hint: it's not about you. Approaching theatre as a product isn't working, not when MFA acting programs don't often allow its graduates to earn enough to earn back their debt. So now the question is: how can the economics of theatre be changed?

Where did all the money go?

pharm — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 03:35:26 -0800

Where did all the money go? is just one of the enties to GOOD's financial crisis infographic competition. The winning entry (Part 1,Part 2) is excellent, but the economics geek in me liked the extra information on the nature of money in the first link.