This urgent request was found at http://www.bradpennock.com/ (Brad Pennock’s Website). 

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of $850 Billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gramm, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

Durst National Debt Clock...in "better" times.

According to the Telegraph.co.uk Website, the U.S. National Debt Clock has too few digits to measure the current state of affairs. The clock’s owner, the Durst Organization, is expected to add a pair of additional placeholders next year, making “it capable of recording a quadrillion dollars of debt.” (See “Financial crisis: US debt clock runs out of numbers,” October 9, 2008.)

Invented and bankrolled by New York real estate developer Seymour Durst, the 11×26-foot National Debt Clock was erected in 1989. When it first was plugged in, the odometer-style clock whirred furiously as the national debt rose by $13,000 a second. Often the last few digits increased so fast they were just a blur. And at one point in the mid-1990s, the debt was rising so fast the clock’s computer crashed. 

Under the presidency of Bill Clinton and a push for a balanced budget, though, the clock started ticking in the opposite direction, shaving off roughly $30 a second towards the turn of the century. Durst’s son felt that was “sending the wrong message at [that] point” and the clock was shut down until 2002 when the “fiscally conservative” administration of George W. Bush reversed course and brought meaning back to the ticker.

According to MIT Technology Review, the current economic crisis may create as many opportunities for investment as it destroys.

No one knows what’s coming next in the great financial crisis of 2008. Deep and lasting recession? Or temporary economic chaos followed by miraculous recovery? The financial upheaval has already soured the atmosphere for venture capital and innovation, as total investment this year looks set to fall for the first time since 2003. But some economists and financial experts believe that there is no need for gloom in the longer term. They even suggest that if the fallout leads to better-regulated capital markets, it could establish a healthier environment for innovation in the future.

While most venture capital firms will take a more conservative approach to investing, that does not mean funding will dry up completely. “Companies with good plans will still be able to raise money,” says Howard Anderson of the Sloan School and an experienced venture capitalist. “But funds will take longer to raise money. And you’ll see fewer ‘big bang’ introductions of new companies that cost a fortune.”

Others say that venture-capital funds will feel pressure to ask entrepreneurs to cut costs and work with less capital. Certainly there’s likely to be a noticeable shift from investment in long-term and more speculative projects to shorter-term research and technology that promises a rapid financial payoff.

Some observers even suggest that the current economic crisis could create opportunities. For one thing, a tremendous number of opportunities have been created in the banking and financial-services sectors. “I would expect an unusually large number of startups to be focused on new technologies for addressing the issues that led to our current crisis,” says one expert. In particular, the development of new electronic-trading and risk-management tools.

The austerity and pain of an economic recession could also have positive consequences in the long term. The financial crisis will lead to not only a clearing out of the financial-services sector, but also to much stronger regulation, which will have beneficial results. “No doubt the recession, which I suspect will last at least two years, will be painful, but during that time, markets and regulators will develop a series of innovations that will lay the groundwork for the future growth of the global economy, which will be spectacular.”