If, while web-surfing at work, you ever wonder about the weather in Omaha or pine for platitudes about thriftiness and solid work ethics, take heart! A rich old man has joined Twitter to tell you things, and also to throttle world markets with RTs of Buzzfeed links, so kick back and grab a Werther's Original.
Do you want to make $600 cash by Tuesday? Then get to work on this rich guy's "Masters Level History" papers. We are not talking about a cut-and-paste from Wikipedia here, this guy is a legitimate grad student who needs to learn about World War II by having you write his well-sourced academic papers. "I've done this type of thing before," he writes, "so I am comfortable and experienced with it." What could go wrong?
Welcome to the amazing and mysterious story of Roman Blum, the Holocaust survivor who died last year at the age of 97 and left behind a $40 million inheritance to nobody.
The Federal Reserve has at last released the first images of the redesigned $100 bill, to go into circulation in October. Along with a tacky golden "100" in the bottom right corner, the new bills will also feature raised printing and security ribbons that change depending on from what angle you look at them. Throw in the silly drawing of the quill pen and this may be the worst $100 bill ever. Annotate it and tell us what you think.
On the heels of Connecticut's post-Newtown push to restrict assault weapons, a Texas tea party congressman has plans to send form letters to Yankee gunmakers, goading them to move their operations to the Lone Star State.
As the internet watched the value of Bitcoin, the anonymous techno-libertarian dweeb-currency, drop by more than half yesterday, a collective wondering went up: Who could be dumb enough to put a significant amount of money in a currency this new, useless and volatile?
Bitcoin finally crashed! And then it didn't. After two weeks in the spotlight, the anonymous techno-libertarian dweeb-currency rocketed past $250 yesterday—only to lose more than half its value over just a few hours today. Only to rally back up to around $200 again, just over the last hour or so. That's millions of dollars. Traded on a Magic: the Gathering site.
Forbes published a rundown yesterday of America's top-paid CEOs, based on data from its annual billionaires list. That's how we learned that there's an annual billionaires list, because apparently billionaires need something to obsess over besides billions of dollars. There are 1,426 billionaires among the human race's 7 billion or so members, meaning you have a roughly .00002 percent chance of becoming a billionaire, all other things being equal. But of course all things are unequal, and your odds are pretty improved if you didn't grow up in a favela or a shanty on the banks of the Ganges. (Good news, developed America: You account for 442 billionaires, the most of any country on the list!)
President Obama is announcing his proposed 2014 budget today, and judging from an overview provided by the White House (below), it's bound to piss off conservatives and progressives in near-equal measure. The $3.77 trillion planned budget includes the largest deficit cut in any year of Obama's tenure.
Eurozone finance ministers are demanding a one-time levy on bank deposits of all sizes—even on insured accounts—as part of a bailout package for Cyprus, which is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Cypriots sprinted to banks and ATMs this weekend, waiting in long lines to withdraw cash after hearing about the plan on Saturday; if approved by Cyprus' parliament, it would mark the first time ordinary European depositors would be asked to take a haircut for a bailout plan. The levy would take 6.7 percent for deposits of less than 100,000 Euros and 9.9 percent for those above, and while more progressive plans have been floated, as it stands right now "[t]his is a conscious choice to make poorer people pay to help richer ones," The Financial Times writes. Why lean on the little guy? In all likelihood to preserve the island nation's status as an offshore haven for, in particular, Russian businessmen. Still, the tax is far from being assured: it's unclear whether President Nicos Anastasiades has the necessary majority to approve the plan, and the vote has been delayed until tomorrow. [Financial Times | NYT | Reuters | image via Getty/AFP]
Jack Lew, Obama's current chief of staff and his reported choice to replace Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary, is known for a lot of things – the New York Times says he's a "fiscal progressive" with "fiscal expertise" and a "low-key style," whatever any of that means – but that's not what we're here to discuss; instead let's talk about his signature, which will soon grace all new dollar bills.
Lindsay Lohan is truly having a terrible year or, anyway, life. The latest drama upsetting her qi has arrived in the form of taxes. Specifically: unpaid back taxes. Totaling over $233,904.
Fresh off a real godforsaken run at foreign policy chops in the wake of deadly riots in Egypt and Libya, Mitt Romney has focused his attention back on making blundering statements about our very own U.S.A. This morning, during a Good Morning America interview, the ultra-wealthy businessman said that he plans on reducing taxes for "middle-income" Americans. But how does he define middle income?
Prefix magazine, a New York-based music and film publication, is hiring news writers for its website. But they can't just be any lame bloggers off the street, of course. Aware that this is a buyer's market when it comes to hiring writing talent, Prefix demands top candidates, noting in a Craigslist job posting that all writing applicants must have "an encyclopedic knowledge of music or film."
In a lengthy new T Magazine profile of rap kingpin Jay-Z, novelist Zadie Smith got the Jigga Man to open up about, amongst other things, his feelings on last year's Occupy Wall Street takeover of Zuccotti Park. Smith reports Jay got "agitated" when she brought up OWS before launching into a mini-rant about what he perceived to be the movement's lack of focus:
Forbes has named the brolic and dormant Dr. Dre this year's Hip-Hop Cash King, the result of him taking in $110 million almost entirely from the immense success of his Beats By Dre headphones. Dre, Forbes explains, "collected $100 million pretax when handset maker HTC paid $300 million for a 51% stake in the company last year."
