The Art of Money

There is a great web page on art made from money here at the Brain Pickings website.
Image shows a hand-made work by American artist Mark Wagner.

With a tip'o'the hat to www.marginalrevolution.com

We are #1!

"In 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked the Canadian banking system as the healthiest in the world. America was ranked 40th, Britain 44th.

Canada has done more than survive this financial crisis. The country is positively thriving in it. Canadian banks are well capitalised and poised to take advantage of opportunities that American and European banks cannot seize. The Toronto Dominion Bank, for example, was the fifteenth largest bank in North America one year ago. Now it is the fifth-largest. It hasn't grown in size; the others have all shrunk.

So what accounts for the genius of the Canadians? Common sense. Over the
past fifteen years, as the United States and Europe loosened regulations on their financial industries, the Canadians refused to follow suit, seeing the old rules as useful shock absorbers."

Fareed Zakaria/ Newsweek

The World's Most Expensive and Useless Things

The World's Most Expensive and Useless Things, like this $25,000 GameBoy. The $30 million bikini is NSFW.

Forbes 400

Forbes has a new list of the 400 richest Americans. They have Bill Gates ahead of Warren Buffett by US$7 billion.
The minimum needed to make the list is $1.3 billion, which as chance has it is almost exactly one dollar for every person who lives in China.

Investment measures illustrated

I am not convinced that it is the best way to understand such things, but this site specializes in explaining investment ratios (and other financial terms) using illustrations, instead of the usual mathematical formulas.

The illustration above shows the quick ratio (also known as the acid test), a commonly-used measure of a company's ability to pay money that it owes in the short term. The quick ratio is actually defined as:

Basically, it just measures how much money you have available (the top of the ratio = assets on hand minus what you have to pay to keep the business running) divided by how much you owe (the bottom part; 'liabilities' are what the company owes. Bank overdrafts, which is how much your bank allows you to go into the hole, are excluded since they are on-going, more or less permanent ways of borrowing). It is best if the quick ratio is at least 1: you don't want to own or invest in (same thing, really) a company that has a ratio lower than 1, because it means that the company does not have enough quickly-available assets to pay its soon-due debts.

Another scary chart

Here's a frightening chart: it shows total US credit market debt (money that has been borrowed by all levels of government, as well as by corporations, and individuals) as a percentage of US gross domestic product (GDP = the total dollar value per year of all goods and services- that is, a measure of how much 'value' there is as measured by how much has actually been paid for stuff). Basically, it is like measuring how much you owe versus how much you spent in a year. Although most people owe more than they spend in any year (easy to do if you have a mortgage), it is generally not good to owe many times more than you can spend...you can't reasonably borrow a million dollars if you have only $50K per year of spending power, because you will never make enough to pay it back.
Look at the Great Depression years, then the years in-between, then the current time.
Yikes.
Click the image for a larger view. For more (but complicated) information and the source, click here.

Four crashes

Click the image for a larger version.

Massive Losses on NYSE/TSX: Today

Today marks the largest one day loss since the 1987 crash. Read more about the article here. Photo here. -679.95 points or 7.7 per cent for Dow Jones and -864.41 points or 9.3 per cent to 8,406.21 for TSX, only today!

Cost of crash: $2,800,000,000,000

According to this article, the recent stock market crash has had a cost of $2,800,000,000,000, or $2.8 trillion.
Picture from the inimitable Brokers With Their Hands On Their Face blog.

Brokers in despair

This blog is devoted to one thing only: Pictures of stockbrokers holding their heads in their hands.
Via: BoingBoing

100 billion dollar bill

This is a real banknote from Zimbabwe, although it is not standard currency. It won't be be around for long: tomorrow, August 1 2008, the government will exchange old for new money at a rate of 10 billion to 1, so this will be a $10 bill. According to Wikipedia, today $100 billion can only buy 3 eggs. I find this interesting, since these banknotes are selling for hundreds of dollars on eBay right now!

People won't take free money

"Representatives from price comparison website, www.moneysupermarket.com wandered the streets [of London] wearing sandwich boards offering a free £5 note to anyone who asked. Despite encountering over 1800 people, only 28 passers by bothered to take advantage of the offer."


Via BoingBoing via http://arbroath.blogspot.com/ (which looks like a cool blog, by the way).

Money makes the world go 'round

Check out these interesting pictures of money. Shown here: A 1934 $100,000 bill (now discontinued). The same company also has pages on interesting facts about money and about credit card debt.

Most expensive watch

This Patek Philippe watch just sold at auction for over $2 million.

Via: Gizmodo.com

Wheeeee! $$$$

Nintendo made a record profit last year, thanks to fantastic sales of the Wii.

From The New York Times, via Gizmodo

Chances of Being Millionaire!

Your Chances of Being a Multimillionaire: 94.9%

You have a decent shot at being a multimillionaire. Surprised? You're confident and a hard worker. Keep it up!

Will You Be a Multimillionaire?

Qotile

Qotile has some cool stuff like Hario or the almost 30000$ Nintendo. Wow!

Forbes Billionaires

Hey! I wouldn't mind a few million but these guys are billionaires list here.
One of the cooler guys is Zhang 1.5 billion he invented Facebook.

Too bad you weren't....

www.BornRich.org is a blog devoted entirely to insanely expensive things. [Pictured: A watch that belonged to Empress Josephine, wife of French ruler Napoleon Bonaparte, which recently sold for $1.3 million!!!]

1 million$ trash

1 million $ trash well, 1,049,000$ to be more exact. One persons garbage is another persons treasure I guess. Expensive piece of junk thought! I also found the Most Expensive Homes in America just go to the slideshow it's the best part.