Things you can do with paper money
Saturday, June 28th, 2008 |
You can find some more of these cool pictures at 1Cup1Coffee
Archive for the ‘Fun’ Category
World Problems for Future Hedge Fund Managers
Sunday, June 8th, 2008 |
Here is a list of financial “problems” for children who desire to become fund managers. I found it originally from an Estonian investing forum and it is great fun! It seems that the original author is someone called Bob Woodiwiss.
Elementary (AGES 5–10)
1. Dick has $1 million. Jane has $1 million. If Dick and Jane both give their $1 million to T. Boone, how many millions will he claim he can turn it into?
2. On his way home from school, Kyle stops to buy a candy bar. It costs 69 cents. How much change should Kyle get back if he pays for the candy with a $1,000,000,000 bill?
3. Among those earning 10-figure incomes, Mr. Soros’s total annual compensation is greater than Mr. Falcone’s. Mr. Falcone’s is greater than Mr. Griffin’s. Mr. Griffin’s is smaller than Mr. Soros’s, and Mr. Paulson’s is greater than Mr. Soros’s.
In descending order, list the men by the respective hotness of their trophy wives.
4. A hedge-fund manager gets up at 5 a.m. It takes him 12 minutes to shower, 8 minutes to get dressed, and 20 minutes to eat breakfast. How big is his domestic staff?
Intermediate (AGES 11–15)
1. Your middle-class parents have a combined household income of $115,000. You receive an allowance of $20 per week. If you save all your allowance for two years, how much debt will you have to finance to hostilely take over your family? How will you structure the debt?
2. The number of hours left in the New York Stock Exchange’s trading day is one-third of the number of hours already passed. How many hours are there until you can start trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange?
3. At 10 a.m., a private Gulfstream G650 takes off from New York, headed south to the Caribbean island of St. Bart’s, traveling at a speed of Mach .9. At 11 a.m., a private Gulfstream G550 takes off from St. Bart’s, headed north to New York, traveling at Mach .885. Both jets fly at 50,000 feet on parallel flight paths. When the aircraft pass each other somewhere over the Atlantic, how long after seeing the G650 will the owner of the G550 kick himself for not going top-of-the-line? (Answer should be expressed in nautical miles.)
4. In a given year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rises 8.3 percent, the NASDAQ rises 7.6 percent, and the S&P 500 rises 7.9 percent. If, in that same period, you manage a $29 billion hedge fund that loses 11.6 percent, how large a year-end bonus are you entitled to? (Round to the nearest $10 million.)
Advanced (AGES 16–18)
1. Mr. Smith is being investigated by the SEC for insider trading. Calculate the probability of Mr. Smith’s relocation to Dubai.
2. If an American hedge-fund manager makes $900 million and is taxed at a rate of 15 percent, how many American factory workers making $32,500 and being taxed at a rate of 25 percent does that make a sucker of? (Show your work.)
3. Your mother gives you x dollars to put gas in the family car. Your father gives you y dollars to get a haircut. You lose x + y dollars betting against your high school’s undefeated football team. Explain to your familial investors how “that’s life.”
4. Days before the housing bubble bursts, you short the ABX subprime index and, when the ensuing mortgage crisis causes millions of families to lose their homes to foreclosure, you realize a $550 million profit.
Since, for you, this is the opposite of a problem, find the opposite of an answer.
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Game: What’s it like to be Chairman of the Fed?
Monday, June 2nd, 2008 |
Here is a fun and addicting game to all you money loving FinancialJesus.com readers.
In the Fed Chairman Game you are in charge or the national monetary policy of the US.
Your goal is simple - you must adjust the Federal Funds rate in order to keep the inflation and unemployment rate stable. This game makes you realize just how difficult it is to steer the national monetary policy.
It took me at least 10 tries to keep inflation in the target 2% area, while at the same time keeping the unemployment rate at around 5% and finishing the game successfully. See if you can do better.
You can play the Fed Chairman Game here.
What is The Federal Funds Rate?
The Federal Funds rate is the interest rate that Federal Reserve (the central bank of US) uses to lend money to other banks. By changing this interest rate the FED has the ability to control the supply of money in the U.S economy. Among many things this basically gives them the power to control the amount of business done in the US and also the unemployment rate.
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17 things you should try doing as a dictator
Sunday, June 1st, 2008 |
While working on a post about countries with cheapest gas prices I came across Saparmurat Niyazov - the former president of Turkmenistan. He died in 2006 but before that he was probably the coolest guys to ever live. He was also one of the worlds most totalitarian and repressive dictators.
Here’s 17 things that Mr. Saparmurat Niyazov did while being a dictator
- He officially renamed the months after the members of his family.
- He made the media refer to him as “His Excellency”
- Mr. Saparmurat won a “democratic” election with 99,9% of the votes
- He changed the entire alphabet (it’s actually not as bad as it sounds - he replaced the Russian letters with the Latin alphabet)
- He closed down all companies providing internet access except for one (It’s easier to monitor 1 company than an entire bunch).
- Mr. Saparmurat banned ballet and opera in the entire country. “Ballet and opera are unnecessary”
- He forbade men from growing long hair and beards
- He made a law that everyone who had a driving license needed to take a morality test. Most American’s probably wouldn’t pass
- Mr. Saparmurat prohibited all TV newsreaders to wear make-up. You probably can’t see the difference from a black and white TV anyway…
- He closed down all the hospitals of Turkmenistan except for 1. “Sick people can come to the capital to treat themselves”
- He closed all libraries in Turkmenistan. “Ordinary Turkmen don’t read books”
- He took away old-age pensions of one third of all old people in Turkmenistan. A lot of old people died because of that.
- He systematically lowered salaries of teachers who didn’t praise him during classes.
- He changed the word bread to the name of his mother - Gurbansoltanedzhe. “I’ll take one Gurbansoltanedzhe with that milk”
- He prohibited car radios and recorded music
- He prohibited all dogs from the city he lived in because “They smell bad“
- Mr. Saparmurat put a picture of himself on every single bank note. No harm done when you look that good!
So here you go - a couple of ideas what to do as a dictator.
You know what they say - Good ideas never die!
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2000 year old decisions are affecting NASA rockets
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 |
The following story was sent to me by a friend on an email. I am no expert on the things it talks about - the rockets of NASA and how they are affected by the technology of ancient Roman Empire - but it sounds so incredible, that it has to be true!
Here is the story
In the United States the standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number, so why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads.
Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.
Why did “they” use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
So the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches was derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.The point to this story?
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRB would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.
The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse’s ass!
If anyone has interesting spam like this, feel free to send it to my email roman [ät] financialjesus [dot] com
The difference between men and women
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 |
The following post is stolen from Imagerocket.
I have seen the exact same post somewhere else a couple of years ago so I’m pretty sure they stole it as well!
Friendship Between Women
A woman didn’t come home one night.
The next morning she told her husband that she had slept over at a friend’s house. The man called his wife’s 10 best friends. None of them knew anything about it.
Friendship Between Men
A man didn’t come home one night.
The next morning he told his wife that he had slept over at a friend’s house. The woman called her husband’s 10 best friends, eight of which confirmed that he had slept over, and two said that he was still there.
Having good friends can be the difference between being poor or being rich!
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Inflation in Zimbabwe hits 100,000%
Saturday, May 24th, 2008 |
You’ve probably heard about rising fears about inflations in the US and pretty much all the countries in the world. Current inflation in USA is about 4%.
How bad can it get?
Meet Zimbabwe
This Southern African country currently boasts inflation over 100,000%. What does this mean?
With inflation at 4% it takes 18 years for money to lose half of its value. By using the rule of 72 we can calculate that with inflation at 100,000% it takes about 6 hours and 20 minutes for your 100 dollars to become $50.
With inflation this high it means that when you leave your shopping for the next day you have effectively lost 93,75% of your money.
Germany in the 1920-s
In 1922 and 1923 Germany went through it’s worse inflation. According to Wikipedia in 1922, its highest denomination was 50,000 Mark. By 1923, the highest denomination was 100,000,000,000,000 Mark. In December of 1923 the exchange rate from marks to US dollars was 4,000,000,000,000:1. During the worst times, one U.S. dollar was equal to 80 billion Mark.
Here are some pictures about living with hyperinflation
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I should never post this video
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 |There is nothing in this video that would make it acceptable that I am posting it here on FinancialJesus.com - a site about making money, getting rich and achieving your wildest dreams! 
In the video below you will see Garry Kasparov - one of the worlds best chess players and a candidate for becoming Russias next president, giving a speech when suddenly something extraordinary happens…
We can learn 4 things from this video:
- I have a twisted sense of humor
- After an event like that no one will ever remember what Garry Kasparov was there to talk about
- A flying pen*s is cool!
- If you would do the same thing with George W. Bush - you’d have your own fan club
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What the goverment is really doing!
Sunday, May 18th, 2008 |
This is another picture I found from my computer. Again - no way of knowing where it is from.
Anyway - I would say it is pretty accurate!
A Pretty smart capitalist
Friday, May 16th, 2008 |This is a little comic that I found from the endless depths of my computer. I have no idea where I got it from but the fact that I decided to save it already says something about it being good stuff. Enjoy! 
Update: The small text on the bottom left corner says - Washington Post, so that’s probably where it’s from
