AIG 3987

I posted this in my private forum and people thought it was funny, so I'm posting it here, as well as in the Trader's Lounge area:

So, here's a fun calculation. AIG lost what this last quarter, just over $61 billion, the largest one quarter loss of any publically traded company in history, anywhere on earth. So, I mentioned to my better half I couldn't get rid of $61 billion in one quarter if I had a gasoline truck and a crate of matches. She said just dump it out the window. So, I decided to calculate how long that would take. I know, dump it by the boxload. We'll get to that. If I threw out a $100 bill once per second, and I never ate, slept, or used the bathroom, how long would it take me to get rid of that $61 billion? Just about twenty years. Twenty years!

Let's do it by the boxload. That would work, it turns out. You only have to move about, give or take, eighty of those $100 bills per second to do it in a quarter. Let's get practical. Let's say you are really strong, with good endurance. You work eight hours a day, five days a week. You can lift a box, move it to the window, shove it out, pause to rest a few seconds, and start again. Assuming anyone could keep this up eight hours a day, you could do a box say every ten seconds. So, how many bills per box to wrap this up in one quarter? You'd need about $320K per box, or 3,200 bills. That's actually quite feasible. That's only 32 stacks of 100 in each stack, with the nice little bands around them.

Let's see, though, fair is fair, I could get more than 32 stacks in a box and lift it, but on the other hand, I should have to put them in the box myself, it isn't fair to have an assistant load up for me, or what's the point of this exercise (I know, there is no real point, but I'm a math geek, so this is actually fun for me). So, I say it's a wash, the time it takes me to load up, I can only do the 32 stacks. I could do more, if I could lift it over and over eight hours a day without a break, but it wouldn't increase the efficiency that much.

So, my conclusion? If I worked full time throwing out boxes of $100 bills non-stop for an entire quarter, I could, in fact, lose that $61 billion. Hence, I guess it isn't so surprising they could lose all that. Now, imagine they had teams of people throwing out that money. See, it may actually be that they were quite conservative, and should be rewarded for not losing a lot more. That's my viewpoint. Let's reward them with a big party paid for by us taxpayers :-)

ROTFLMAO

Jim, you're thinking like a third-rate ditchdigger from a backwater nation. That's not how to do it.

Go to your computer and open your accounting software. Now decrease the value of all your holdings (its the opposite of the way you used to increase their value)
Hit the Calculate buttun and let the machine do the work. It won't take an hour with that new computer. Now please send my bonus check to Box we're so screwed, Everytown, USA. Oh don't forget my airline tickets to that party. Is it on the French Riviera again this year?

Condor, dude, u made one (1 !?!) single post in your whole career as a forum member and that's all u can come up with?
U command so much respect and credibility with your one post...yeah ,super !