You Can't Make This Stuff Up

[cjppjc]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

This one almost deserved a thread of its own...

And no, I didn't make this stuff up. Really I didn't...

April 14th, 2009
Goldman steps up to save America

Not much rides on Goldman Sachs‘ success at shedding TARP – just the future of Wall Street, the recovery of the U.S. and global economies, and saving whatever shreds remain of the American Dream. Though it may take some financial finagling to extricate itself from the government’s grip, Goldman’s storied stable of financial savants is as capable as any of casting off the yoke of socialism.

For Wall Street, Goldman fights for the right to pay people whatever the market will bear, enshrining the guiding principal of the marketplace that it is not how much money one earns, but how much more than the other guy. For the economy, everyone knows we need a healthy banking sector to run our particularly high-octane form of capitalism. As for the American Dream, what this country needs most in this time of financial peril is a hero, someone who can stand up to the regulatory Frankenstein shambling from the wreckage of such spectacularly failed government efforts as AIG and Lehman Brothers.

The only question really for Goldman shareholders is how big a bonus Lloyd Blankfein should get if he manages to achieve these lofty goals.

Christopher Kaufman; DealZone Editor

I wonder if Chris is a shareholder, or just an idiot.

[cobben]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_mercury

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

What goes around, comes around...:eek:

For finance pros, Asia expat life losing perks

Thu Jul 23, 2009 10:22pm EDT

HONG KONG (Reuters) - For most financial market professionals in this city and other hubs across Asia, the days of extravagant expatriate life have ended...

...The standard HK$200,000 per month ($25,641) housing allowance for top bankers is gone or going in most cases.
Paid-for chauffeurs to tote executives and their families around the steep hills of Hong Kong are scarcer, as are free memberships to exclusive country, golf or dinner clubs that may otherwise cost more than HK$2.1 million to join.

Free private school education for the kids, roughly $10,000 per child at international schools, is getting scaled back too.

And in another sign of lean times, corporate ships for pleasure cruises around Hong Kong's myriad beaches and outlying islands are getting auctioned off, with UBS AG among the financial institutions to recently set plans to part with its junk boat reserved for employees and clients...

...Anecdotal evidence gathered in the last six months shows a herd of bankers moving from palatial flats to more modest abodes, or relocating to less exclusive and cheaper districts...

[Supercilious]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

This is really epic:

http://kotaku.com/5348223/bank-deficit-freezes-eve-accounts

Bank Deficit Freezes EVE Accounts

By Owen Good, 8:40 PM on Fri Aug 28 2009,

From the MMO-as-IRL file, EVE Online's biggest bank has frozen accounts for anyone who invested any kredits with it, after it was discovered that the bank is 380bn kredits in the hole, without the funds to cover player withdrawals.
EBank, the institution in question, was also hit by a naked fraud scheme earlier this year, in which an embezzler stole 200bn kredits and resold it all for real world cash. The episode caused an actual run on the virtual bank. Now its new chairman has admitted the bank's rampant mismanagement without following rules, safeguards and controls, has led to a 380 billion ISK shortfall.
The bank's board of directors report that it faces a deficit of about 1.2 trillion ISK, which increases about 12 billion ISK a month. According to the bank chief, "withdrawals will be allowed once the bank achieves a maintainable equity status of 90% (1.8t currently); they will be stopped again should that fall below 80%."

And from Artechnica:

Virtual bank in EVE freezes accounts due to deficit

Surprise! It turns out that massive embezzlement and defaulted loans are just as bad for virtual banks in computer games as they are for banks in the real world.


Early this summer, it came to light that a veteran EVE player (known only as "Ricdic") had embezzled —and then sold in the real world— over 200 billion ISK from Ebank, causing a run on the virtual financial institution. However, this was just the beginning of the problems for the player-owned bank. Recently installed Ebank Chairman Ray McCormack admitted that the bank had been mismanaged, and rules, safeguards, and controls were not enforced. As a result, it's been revealed that Ebank is 380 billion ISK poorer thanks to a number of defaulted loans. Because of the aforementioned mismanagement, it apparently took the bank's new officers a while to figure out just how far in the red their institution is.

At the moment, customer accounts will remain frozen until the bank manages to stabilize. According to McCormack, "withdrawals will be allowed once the bank achieves a maintainable equity status of 90% (1.8t currently); they will be stopped again should that fall below 80%."
The main problem with Ebank's account freezing is that it could do some serious harm to the game's economy, mainly because players won't be able to withdraw their funds in order to pay for in-game goods and services. Exactly how long a recovery will take is currently anyone's guess, though, as it turns out that the board of directors revealed that the bank is currently facing a deficit of roughly 1.2 trillion ISK, with the amount increasing by approximately 12 billion ISK a month.

This is beyond funny !!!!

I hope everybody realizes what will happen if we make contact with an extraterrestrial civilization and Goldman Sachs is still around ....

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Canadian trucker fined for smoking on the job

Fri Oct 9, 2009 4:46pm EDT

TORONTO (Reuters) - A Canadian truck driver has been fined for smoking in his vehicle because it is considered his workplace, a police spokeswoman said on Friday.

A police officer saw the 48-year-old trucker driving on a highway in southwestern Ontario with a cigarette in his mouth on Wednesday, and gave him a C$305 ($290) ticket.

The Smoke-Free Ontario Act, adopted in 2006, prohibits smoking in an enclosed workplace or enclosed public area, and that extends to work vehicles, said Constable Shawna Coulter of the Ontario Provincial Police in Essex County.

"We enforce the legislation and this truck driver was in violation of that," she said.

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Marge Simpson makes cover of Playboy

Fri Oct 9, 2009 6:53pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "D'oh!" doesn't even start to cover it.

Marge Simpson -- the blue beehived matriarch of America's most loved dysfunctional family - is Playboy magazine's November cover, the magazine said on Friday...

..."It had never been done, and we thought it would be kind of hip, cool and unusual," Flanders told the newspaper. He said the magazine hoped to attract readers in their 20s compared to the average Playboy reader's age of 35...

[metalman]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Canadian trucker fined for smoking on the job

Fri Oct 9, 2009 4:46pm EDT

TORONTO (Reuters) - A Canadian truck driver has been fined for smoking in his vehicle because it is considered his workplace, a police spokeswoman said on Friday.

A police officer saw the 48-year-old trucker driving on a highway in southwestern Ontario with a cigarette in his mouth on Wednesday, and gave him a C$305 ($290) ticket.

The Smoke-Free Ontario Act, adopted in 2006, prohibits smoking in an enclosed workplace or enclosed public area, and that extends to work vehicles, said Constable Shawna Coulter of the Ontario Provincial Police in Essex County.

"We enforce the legislation and this truck driver was in violation of that," she said.

at least your cops are law abiding...

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

at least your cops are law abiding...

...as long as they aren't sneaking a smoke in the cruiser they are...

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Hard to believe this site needs yet another thread, but I came across the following, figured it would take the edge off the sometimes serious tone we get into around here, couldn't figure out where to put it, so I started this thread thinking others could just add anything similar - amusing, incredulous, revealing, impossible to be true, whatever...

What follows is dead serious. You can't make this stuff up...

Saudi divorces wife for watching male TV host:
Date: 9/29/2007 4:25:00 PM

A Saudi man divorced his wife for watching alone a television programme presented by a male, an act he deemed immoral, the Al Shams newspaper reported on Saturday...

Okay, time for a return visit to the country that prompted this thread in the first place.

The two faces [?] of Saudi Arabia, where apparently women give men "hearts burn" :

In Saudi Arabia, a Campus Built as a 'Beacon of Tolerance'

High-Tech University Draws the Ire of Hard-Line Clerics for Freedoms It Provides to Women

Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 9, 2009
THUWAL, Saudi Arabia -- On this gleaming high-tech campus edged by the Red Sea, May Qurashi crossed a barrier the other day. She played a game on PlayStation with some male fellow students. Her best friend, Sarah al-Aqeel, is also reaching for the forbidden. She's getting her driver's license.

Under Saudi Arabia's strict constraints, Saudi women like Qurashi and Aqeel may neither mingle with men nor drive. But at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which opened last month on this sprawling site 50 miles north of Jiddah, men and women take classes together. Women are not required to wear traditional black head-to-toe abayas or veil their faces -- and they can get behind a steering wheel...

...Saudi officials describe the multibillion-dollar postgraduate institution as the spear in the kingdom's efforts to transform itself into a global scientific center rivaling those in the United States, Europe and Asia.

But the kingdom's powerful religious establishment is increasingly voicing criticism of the university. On Web sites, clerics have blasted the school's coeducational policy as a violation of sharia, or Islamic law. Last week, a member of the influential Supreme Committee of Islamic Scholars, a government-sanctioned body, called for a probe into the curriculum and its compatibility with sharia law, local newspapers reported.

"Mixing is a great sin and a great evil," Saad bin Nasser al-Shithri was quoted as saying in the al-Watan newspaper. "When men mix with women, their hearts burn, and they will be diverted from their main goal," which he said is "education."...

And to think, Bill Clinton only faced impeachment for behaving similarly...:rolleyes:

...Lawyers say Abdul-Jawad could have been given the death penalty...

Man faces prison, flogging over TV sex revelations

Wed Oct 7, 2009 1:10pm EDT

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - A Saudi court has sentenced a man to five years in jail and 1,000 lashes for boasting about his sexual exploits on television, in a case that has divided public opinion in the conservative Islamic kingdom...

...Three of Abdul-Jawad's friends who appeared on the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC) were sentenced to two years in jail and 300 lashes each.

LBC is a popular channel in Saudi Arabia, one of the world's most conservative societies, and many Saudis tune into its Western-style entertainment programs and talk shows.

Abdul-Jawad, 32, spoke from his bedroom on an episode of "In Bold Red." He was shown driving his red convertible to a shopping mall where he said he used his mobile phone to pick up girls.

A court official said that, on top of the lashings and jail sentence, Abdul-Jawad's phone and car would be confiscated and he would be banned from traveling after completing his term...

..."Now he has been fired from his job and after his jail term it won't be possible for him to get a job in government or the private sector because he was charged with a case of moral indecency"...

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Not sure what to do with that big bonus, from the luscious profits made on the all that free money from the taxpayers?

No problem. Stash it all in the bank and take advantage of more free money to make it look like you are spending it and supporting the moribund global economy...

Zero Percent Financing Available on 2009 and 2010 Lamborghini Murciélagos


‘Tis the season to buy a Murciélago with zero-percent financing. Lamborghini of America introduced a new Lamborghini Retail Finance Plan that allows customers to buy a Lamborghini Murciélago LP640-4 at zero percent for 60 months.


With the new financing deal, Lamborghini hopes to allow more automotive enthusiasts to get behind the wheel of one of the rarest and fastest cars on the plant. Purchasing a car that has a base price of more than $350,000 normally requires some serious wealth. Now, all it requires is a solid credit score...

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

For those that have mastered how the walk like an Egyptian, the next challenge is to learn to party like a Libyan...:p

Italian women disappointed by Gaddafi "party"

Mon Nov 16, 2009 8:40am EST

ROME (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in Rome for a U.N. food summit, spent several hours in the company of 200 Italian women recruited by an agency and tried to convert them to Islam, Italian media reported Monday.

"Seeking 500 attractive girls between 18 and 35 years old, at least 1.70 meters (5 foot, 7 inches) tall, well-dressed but not in mini-skirts or low cut dresses," read the ad by the Hostessweb agency and quoted in Italy's Corriere dell Sera newspaper in its story.

Some 200 women showed up at a Rome villa, having been told they would receive 60 euros ($90) and "some Libyan gifts." Among them was an undercover reporter for Italian news agency ANSA, who took photos and described the evening's proceedings.

Most had expected to attend a party, according to ANSA, but instead were invited to wait in a large hall until the arrival of Gaddafi, who gave them a lesson on Libya and the role of women in Islam.

After around two hours the lesson, including questions and answers through an interpreter, concluded with an exhortation by Gaddafi to "convert to Islam" and with each woman given a copy of the Koran and a book of sayings by Gaddafi.

"It was anything but the VIP party we were expecting, they didn't even give us a glass of water," one woman told ANSA...

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Apparently the Spanish have a somewhat different attitude and response than the Greeks toward an economic crisis...

Unpaid Spanish air hostesses strip in protest

MADRID
Wed Mar 31, 2010 6:51pm EDT

(Reuters) - Flight attendants owed up to nine months' wages by a grounded Spanish airline have posed nude for a calendar to draw attention to their plight, one of the cabin crew turned models said on Wednesday.

The calendar, numerous excerpts of which appeared in the Spanish media, shows the Air Comet attendants, all female, posing provocatively in and outside airline cabins, and in one case on top of a jet turbine...

[jk]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Apparently the Spanish have a somewhat different attitude and response than the Greeks toward an economic crisis...

Unpaid Spanish air hostesses strip in protest

MADRID
Wed Mar 31, 2010 6:51pm EDT

(Reuters) - Flight attendants owed up to nine months' wages by a grounded Spanish airline have posed nude for a calendar to draw attention to their plight, one of the cabin crew turned models said on Wednesday.

The calendar, numerous excerpts of which appeared in the Spanish media, shows the Air Comet attendants, all female, posing provocatively in and outside airline cabins, and in one case on top of a jet turbine...

seems less a protest than an advert. check out the pics in the slide show at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_522049.html
is it your sympathy that is aroused? ready to fly air comet?

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

seems less a protest than an advert. check out the pics in the slide show at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_522049.html
is it your sympathy that is aroused? ready to fly air comet?

I don't think I am ready to fly Air Comet, but I'm quite ready to trade Souvlaki for Paella or some Tapas...Greece isn't going away, but it's time for a change...

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

June 07, 2010
The Commission to Study Deficits is Broke

Randall Hoven

As reported by The Fiscal Times, President Obama's commission to study the problem of what to do about the government running short of money is running short of money.

"President Obama's bipartisan fiscal commission is operating on a shoestring budget and some panel members and lawmakers worry that it may run short of money.