Capital Vandalism

Capital vandalism is about the destruction of wealth.  This is a timely subject, since the U.S. financial system is under stress and the results of the housing bubble are popping up with frequency in main stream media.  Naturally, the most interesting and timely information is available on blogs.  In fact, the main stream media is becoming blogs at an alarming rate (see www.nyt.com).

Orders of Magnitude:

• $1 - will almost buy a paper copy of the NYT
  
• $10 - a trip to Starbucks with a little change left.
  
• $100 - a tank of gas and lunch money. 
  
• $1,000
  
• $10,000
  
• $100,000
  
• $1,000,000 - Used to be associated with the concept of a millionaire.  Barely high net worth.
  
• $10,000,000 - Start dreaming about fractional jet ownership.
  
• $100,000,000 - Not like the rest of us.
  
• $1,000,000,000 - A billion.  The basic unit of corporate finance.  
  
• $10,000,000,000 - Cost of a smaller company that you may have heard of.
  
• $100,000,000,000 - A big company you have heard of.
  
• $1,000,000,000,000 - A trillion.  A material amount of money when talking about the US Economy.
  

The reason for the chart above, is that it gets damn confusing to talk about big numbers without a frame of reference.  Citibank loses another $billion - needs to be thought of in the context of their capital and what they said they earned last year ($20 billion).

The other bias of this blog is a historical point of view.  A lot of stuff that seems new has happened before.  The details are always different, but there are recurring themes.  

Welcome.