A mining hole in the mountains of Bohemia produced so much silver it became the official source of coinage for the entire Holy Roman Empire. The mine was in a valley called Joachimsthal, and the coins came to have the same name: “Joachimstalers.” Over time this became shortened to “Talers” and over more time, the [...]

Amedeo Giannini, son of Italian immigrants to the US, started the Bank of Italy in a converted saloon in San Francisco at 9 am on Monday, October 17, 1904. On the first day, 28 deposits totalled $8,780. When an earthquake struck in 1907, he ran his bank from a plank in the street – the [...]

Banks are the most unsafe institutions in the world. Worldwide, hundreds of them crash every few years. Two decades ago, the US Government was forced to invest hundreds of billions of Dollars in the Savings and Loans industry. Multi-billion dollar embezzlement schemes were unearthed in the much feted BCCI – wiping both equity capital and [...]

Banks are institutions where miracles happen regularly. We rarely entrust our money to anyone but ourselves and our banks. Despite a very checkered history of mismanagement, corruption, false promises and representations, delusions and behavioral inconsistency banks still succeed to motivate us to give them our money. Partly it is the feeling that there is safety [...]

Credit was first used in Assyria, Babylon and Egypt 3000 years ago. The bill of exchange – the forerunner of banknotes – was established in the 14th century. Debts were settled by one-third cash and two-thirds bill of exchange. Paper money followed only in the 17th century. The first advertisement for credit was placed in [...]

Remember, if it sound too good to be true, it probably is When you buy through the Internet you have as many rights in law as when you buy through other means. But read online advertisements, particularly those in emails, with caution; they can be deceptive in various ways. The same signs that arouse your [...]

The belief that to attain wisdom and virtue one must give up all the pleasures of life originated from the Cynics, an ancient sect. The Greek philosopher, Diogenes (c412-323BC), adopted the philosophy, discarded all his possessions except a cloak, purse and wooden bowl, and made his home in a barrel, living in it on the [...]

When David Hasselhoff’s ex, Pamela Bach, got arrested on DUI the Hoff rushed out and paid her bail of $100,000. That’s a lot of dough. But not as much as loanmoan Al Malnik forked out to get Michael Jackson back into the open air: $3 million. A mere pittance, British billionaire banker Julius Meinl IV [...]

It seemed so easy to make a quick buck. “Everyone ought to be rich” they said back in 1929, somewhere around October. But as the saying goes, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” As it happens, most stock market crashes throughout history happened in the month of October, even the [...]

Money notes are not made from paper, it is made mostly from a special blend of cotton and linen. In 1932, when a shortage of cash occurred in Tenino, Washington, USA, “notes” were made out of wood for a brief period. The wood notes came in $1, $5 and $10 values. The world’s largest coins, [...]