i'm definitely one of those people who forget money in their pant pockets very often and before i know it the money's put in the laundry and gets laundered!! that's not bad when i earn it under the table but these days i still work in the pay-your-taxes economy so when i put decent money in the laundry it gets destroyed. so my girlfriend suggested that since there is nothing more she can do with my faulty memory she'll buy me bills that are water-proof and detergent-resistant. i initially liked her idea so i kept going and told her she worries too much i'll go back to earning money that Needs laundering. interesting what silly topics you get to think and talk with your girlfriend sometimes. water-proof money, yeah right! :)

Hi, I have an observation to make. If your thoughts have values and are worth some money, does that mean that if I steal all the money from your thoughts your thoughts have no value any more? Huh? In my view, if you want to value thoughts with money, starting with this one (!) that's not such a bad idea. To think, however, that a thought has value because it has money, to me, that is absolutely aloo-dicrous idea :-)

If you drop a $100 bill in the street anywhere in the US almost everyone will pick it up. Almost. Certainly more people than if you drop the equivalent of a $100 in a foreign currency. Not everyone will pick it up even though it's money convertible into dollars and has value. It's an interesting question I post to people I interview: value or money? When I pose the question without the example most people say value for money but as they leave my office very few people pick up the value of $100 in foreign currency I had deliberately left at the exit. When it's $100 in dollars I tend to lose money most of the time. My value for money pays off when people pick up the foreign currency bill, these are usually the ones I like to hire!

I imagine that in the future paper money will be replaced by e-paper money. If electronic paper can be made to work as a scanner, it could then scan for fingertips and transmit the identity of the person when close to a wireless network. This could help monitor the flow of cash in the economy and help catch tax fraudsters, terrorists and criminals who tend to use cash to avoid detection by the police. (read more)

I think this story will turn into a very funny movie one day. I'm willing to bet my bank's money on it. Here's how it got reported on the news:

"The FBI in Denver is on the lookout for a serial bank robber dubbed the 'Shaggy Bandit' for his resemblance to cartoon canine Scooby-Doo's human sidekick...According to the FBI, the Shaggy Bandit enters a bank, approaches a teller and demands money. He displays a backpack and generally gets the money (!) and is out the door before any customers even know what is happening." (read more)

I was thinking, why doesn't it make sense to keep money under our mattresses? That's because it's inconvenient and not safe in the event of house theft. That's one reason we have banks. Since many banks were taken over by governments to survive the crisis, I figured there must be a way to deal with the inconvenience of having banks and the safety issue of keeping all our money with us be it under the mattress, inside it or over it. I mean, if we really wanted to do it, we could. Here's my thinking: (read more)

Something's not right and some things I can't understand... When we say a lot of people lost money in a credit gamble where do these losses go? Aren't the losses someone else's winnings? How is it possible that everyone is losing money at the same time? Unless people lost something they never had that should never bring us into the kind of recession everyone talks about, you know there's no money to go around any more. Where can the money really go? It doesn't just fly...Seems to me this global financial crisis is more a symptom of an economic transformation, the winners of that credit spree will decide the new direction of economic growth but who are the winners? News are full of losers but no one is pointing at the winners who will essentially be the new lenders. I think that is what we need to see more of in the news, stories of winners so that we know where to apply next for work and funding for new projects

When an economy goes into recession it would make sense if bank robberies were on the rise. A recession gives more reasons to steal a bank. Poor people need rich people's money and banks usually have it. Not this time. Bank robbers of the Robin Hood kind are very depressed. Why would they steal a bank? Whose money will they get away with? The Chief Executive Orcas have bonused away all the treasures and left huge losses for the adventurous Robin Hoods to bear. Whatever money is left in the bank is the people's money. For me, that's why this recession is so depressing and unfair. No Robins. No hoods either...

TARP: $700 billion
Stimulus package: $787 billion
Guarantees to AIG and Citibank: $420 billion
Reserved funding for health care. $634 billion
Money set aside for more bailouts: $750 billion

Feeling that we're actually fixing something, and getting something for our money: Priceless. (read more)

Say you won $100 million in the jackpot. What will you do with the money after you buy all the things you wanted in your life? I'd like to spend $50 million to buy 10 million new tickets to see if I can win another lottery. $50 million! The odds of winning it again must be very good. But then, if the odds are really that good, why wouldn't most rich people invest their money in the lottery? And if they all did that, wouldn't that bring down the odds of winning it again? Apparently rich people get brutally "discriminated" from playing the lottery and buying in bulk. We've just discovered the one market where your millions can't buy you millions. In life, there are some money, money can't buy :)