How smart can bankers be?

You think bankers have to be smart guys (to steal your money at least :-). I read the following incident, the french bank BBVA in Buenos Aires was undergoing restoration work and for that reason the owners of the bank decided to turn off alarms, disconnect circuit cameras and other security devices in order to make things easy for the workers. They were so smart that they didn't even bother to tell the local police station that the security would be turned off during the time of the restoration. So what happened? A bunch of more clever thieves dressed up in painters' uniform and wearing painters' masks, entered the bank pretending to do paint work and without any major trouble stole everything they could from it.
If bankers are so smart no wonder why we are in crisis.

http://www.thinkaloo.com

laundry-proof money

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! :)

http://www.thinkaloo.com

Let casino CEOs run banks!

A friend of mine who used to work for a bank that doesn't exist anymore used to tell me that a banker's real job is actually very very boring. Take deposits, give loans, call on borrowers to ask them to pay etc etc Yes really boring stuff. So when a banker is really bored he dreams of being in exotic places doing exotic things and then allows his in-house trader to design exotic trades and instruments for him. He used to say the only way to add spice to his job was to let bankers gamble selling it as 'financial innovation' which they did and here we are. So I wonder why not let casino CEOs run the remaining banks that are left? They're good at what they do, aren't they? When you go to a casino you always end up losing your money up to your pain point but the point is that the house Never goes bankrupt!! That's way better for the rest of us who are not gamblers, isn't it?

http://www.thinkaloo.com

Sextortion

Be careful where you sleep and who you sleep with. I heard some prostitutes are part of money extortion gangs. The prostitutes join match-making sites and pose as single girls but then have their gang members take photos of you and her or if you make the mistake and take video or photos with the new girl you met they will use those too.

It's then easy for them to find out about your life and contact details and they are one email away from blackmailing your wife. They target married men.

It works easy for them because they can blackmail anonymously and emails don't cost them anything. The prostitutes keep making good money too and only have to sleep once or twice with you. Sometimes the gangs just compile a database of cheaters and sell it to other gangs to work on them. So even if you thought you paid and you're safe you might get blackmailed from others.

http://www.thinkaloo.com

Toilet paper money

It's been suggested before only as a joke, now let me reiterate it as a half-joke. If printing money is the answer to massive debts and global deflation could we ask that central banks print money on toilet paper so that it's rendered useful if zimbabwe-style inflation sets in? If the quality of paper is smooth and rectum-friendly we won't need foreign exchange markets either. We can just barter, trade, swap, insure or invest in each country's toilet paper comparative advantage. And unlike forex markets, almost every single person in the world uses toilet paper. We're talking of a potential 7-billion-people-essentially-single-currency economy here. Keep it in mind please!

http://www.thinkaloo.com

madoff hitman fund for companies

the name for a hitman fund after bernard madoff. basically investors and shareholders in a company set aside money to pay hitmen to take out swindlers, crooks and fraudsters. make it a requirement for banks, hedge funds, insurance and investment companies of any kind. benefits? delivers swift justice and guarantees efficient functioning of the markets as fraudsters must think about their life before they decide to swindle.

usually the real culprits behind big-time frauds tend to write books, give seminars, stay famous and continue to live in luxury a few years after the scandal. so instead of innocent investors who have been defrauded committing suicide, how about the real culprits get punished for a change? the current state of affairs is pitiful. hitmen contracts must be written in the bylaws of companies and kick-in automatically. if they don't prevent people from committing fraud, they will apply rightful justice after!

http://www.thinkaloo.com

How to cut down a pirate's pi/e/

The best way for companies and governments to recover the huge amounts of ransom money paid to Somali pirates is to use inter-pirate rivalry to get the money back piece by piece. Here's the real story first:

"Pirates seized the Sirius on November 15. A $3.5 million ransom payment, down from the initial demand of $25 million, was dropped by parachute onto the ship Friday, but the pirates delayed the vessel's release after the drownings. Other pirates on the shore wanted a tip from the pirates on the Sirius Star, so they started to fire in the air as our people approached the land"

Going from $25 million down to $3.5 million is great savings but $3.5 million is still Sirious money. Wanna have a pirate's pi and eat it too? Here's what you can do. This is a Sirius proposition after all.

You negotiate with a rival team of pirates to give them the $3 million and you keep the $500,000. You actually hire them and sign a contract with them. It's all about enticing them to really go after their own ilk. You give them immunity from any prosecution if they fetch you back the $500,000 they get to keep the $3 million which in effect has been money-laundered and can be used tax-free anywhere in the world! Or so you say to them anyway :P

But before they get to use the money and as soon as that first contract is signed, you immediately start negotiating with rival teams of pirates to steal the money from the pirates who held it last. As the process of signing successive contracts and watering down the initial amount goes on, at some point you will have recovered the full original amount paid in ransom and in the process you will also have gotten rid off of most pirates.

I see no problem signing second-time and third-time watered-down contracts even with the same team of pirates if you run out of rivalries. I also see no problem agreeing to cover funeral expenses for any pirate losses incurred and sibling re-trainings in non-pirate activities. Somali funerals are cheap and sibling re-training in non-pirate activities means that spouses and kids will be taken off piracy!

Take it from a pirate. Deceit is the language they can understand. You better use it if you want to speak the same language and get your work done successfully and not put your men in harm's way :)

http://www.thinkaloo.com

Could you be Borat for a day?

If someone offered you $10,000 to wear Borat's lime green "mankini" swimsuit for a day on the beach, would you do it? Apart from wearing the swimsuit, you won't be allowed to dress in his character, eg wear a wig and moustache, sunglasses. You won't be allowed to tell anyone why you're wearing it other than to say that you like wearing it.

Note: we're talking US dollars here.

http://www.thinkaloo.com

The measure of wealth

Measure wealth not by the things you have but by the things you have for which you would not take money.

So how wealthy are you today?

http://www.thinkaloo.com

The Adam Smith solution to the economy. Sell inside info!

We are told the problem with trading credit derivatives over-the-counter is lack of transparency. Investors don't know how much risk the banks have on their balance sheet.

We read that no one really knows how much of these toxic assets have been bought by banks because they are not disclosed. They are not required to be disclosed because they are not regulated. A different solution to taxpayers footing the bill would be to ask the banks to keep the trades invisible but sell their invisibility to investors. Good information makes money so create a market.

The banks will make this invisible 'inside-info' visible to those investors who are willing to buy it in order to avoid betting their money on the wrong horse and lose more. But by selling the info to investors banks make money which reduces their losses so that other investors get interested in investing in them again.

Just because the logic is simple it doesn't mean it's not ingenius. If you don't think so, ask yourself why is it any more ingenius to have the taxpayer pay and not an investor pay to buy a good asset (a.k.a inside info on the losses).

The invisible hand of the market can recycle money as it knows best by turning the invisibility of risk exposure into a precious asset up for sale.

http://www.thinkaloo.com

ATM sterilization service

I read about good hygiene and how necessary it is to prevent the spread of viruses, germs and the flu and I am thinking, wouldn't it be a great idea if ATMs would sterilize/disinfect the ATM card and the cash we deposit and withdraw from them? ATMs won't save mankind from the next epidemic, fine, but that's one less source of spreading worms and germs around. And cash is dirty because not Everyone knows how to launder it properly. Corrupt leaders try hard to teach but the masses refuse to learn. Not everyone can be a good money-launderer so better to sterilize the money supply :D

http://www.thinkaloo.com

Cut the change

You dig the depths of your pocket for a quarter or a dime but all you come up with is $1 and $5 notes, sorry no change. Sometimes it would have been so much easier if the notes were perforated so that we could strip across the dotted lines and come up with the change. If a whole note is legal tender why can't its parts be legal tender as well? :P

http://www.thinkaloo.com

How to make money from Social Networks Terrorism!

The Israeli government warned that terrorism groups are using Facebook and other social networking sites to recruit Israeli citizens as spies and asked its citizens to beware.

If you receive a message from someone you don't know asking you to pass classified information for payment, he could be a terrorist. This is so stupid. And so easy to make tons of money from the terrorists without undermining national security. Agree to the deal, request that the money gets deposited to your account and do a Google search to find info related to the one they ask you, then write it up and email it. You get the money and secret service can track the source of the payment too. Top secret classified info cannot be confirmed right away by any terrorist, if they had the ability to do that they wouldn't be asking it from you in the first place. This is a stupid way to advertise Facebook but even if it was true it's potentially profitable, so why not, what the heck!

http://thinkaloo.com

Why deposit money in the bank when you can print on-demand?

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:

Banks are replaced with print-money government shops. Unlike a normal deposit bank, customers don't deposit money, they only withdraw using a regular ATM card. The print-money government shop won't keep stacks of money in a safe box. It will only print money for the customer who owns it. Its function is to print money on-demand!

That means that if you own $1 million dollars you can go to the print-money shop and get all your $1 million with you. But, you can't deposit it back.

Because you can't deposit it back, people will tend to print-withdraw only the amounts they need to carry their transactions.

The difference with a regular bank is that the customer doesn't have to worry that the bank might lose or run out of money since the only thing available in the government print-money shop will be printers. The printers will be the same kind of machines the FED uses to print money. The only run on the bank can be a manufacturing strike on paper or ink!

For the amount of remaining balance in your account you haven't printed yet, the government will offer you interest on it which will have to be slightly below the rates deposit banks currently charge and definitely below the rates the government borrows in the form of bonds and T-bills from national and international investors.

My proposed architecture will probably revolutionize bank robberies too. The challenge won't be to break into and out of the bank but to forge money. Remember the movie 'Catch me if you can' with Leonardo di Caprio? That's how bank robbers will operate in the new system.

Or if they know you went to the money-print government shop and withdrew all your millions to stash it under your mattress, they might pay you a visit when you're out.

So don't hoard your cash in your house, just print it on-demand! :)

http://www.thinkaloo.com

The value of a thought

Hi everyone, I'm a new member. I enjoy reading what gets posted here but 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 :-)

http://www.thinkaloo.com

How to raise money for the Olympic Games

Olympic Games cost a lot of money and often leave cities and countries in large debt. Here's an idea to raise money for them. It's based on user hanagasa's thought about fireworks advertising.

For a very small charge (few cents) send a short personal text message from the mobile phone that will appear along with your name in the fireworks of the opening/closing ceremony. Only 1 lucky message gets displayed. The lucky sender gets refunded and his message read by everyone around the world watching the games. The hundreds of millions of people whose sent messages won't appear will raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the organizers.

www.thinkaloo.com

Short hair saves you money

This thought was posted on Thinkaloo on 24 October 2007 by member josh

Visit www.thinkaloo.com, our new online community where you can share your thoughts and knowledge, discuss your ideas, ask questions and meet smart people

---

You use less shampoo when you shower and you also save on electricity by making less or no use at all of the hair dryer.

It works.

Water turns fatty food into light food

This thought was posted on Thinkaloo on 22 February 2008 by member koreen

Visit www.thinkaloo.com, our new online community where you can share your thoughts and knowledge, discuss your ideas, ask questions and meet smart people

---

If a light food product you buy in the supermarket means a product with less calories, then you can turn every food into light food by adding water to it. Most calorie measurements in food are based on samples of 100 grams, so if you add water the 100 grams become 200 but the calories stay the same or are less as percentage of the overall intake

Products I can think of this can apply are alcohol, beer, wine, yogurt, soups, milk shakes, ice cream, coke etc

The taste might be diluted but will still be the same. If you turn normal food products into light ones this way, you will also be saving money as light products are usually more expensive compared to the original ones!

Re-use rain water

This thought was posted on Thinkaloo on 21 February 2008 by member luppo

Visit www.thinkaloo.com, our new online community where you can share your thoughts and knowledge, discuss your ideas, ask questions and meet smart people

----

good idea to consume less water is to collect water from rain on rooftop of every building and purify/clean with filter first. then use it for washing dishes, laundry, shower etc, saves money and water!

How to ask back for money you borrowed to a friend?

This thought was posted on Thinkaloo on 15 February 2008 by member kreeft

Visit www.thinkaloo.com, our new online community where you can share your thoughts and knowledge, discuss your ideas, ask questions and meet smart people
------------------------

About 7 months ago I borrowed money to a friend who was in a great need. My question is how can I bring this issue to our conversation now? I noticed he never mentions anything about that and I'm shy to initiate such a subject. Would something like that affect our friendship?