Cable Bill

29 March 2011 - You may have heard the story about the man living in a 14x60 trailer who got a $12,864 electric bill, or the Corpus Christie man who was billed $7.7 million by his water company, or the Canadian whose cell phone provider hit him up for $85,000--the list truly goes on and on and on. Now the outrageous bill receivers club has a new member. Yes, based on the cable bill that an American man received this week, he's either the king of pay-per-view, or the victim of one of the most extreme computerized billing glitches in the history of computerized billing glitches. Fortunately for him, it looks like it's the latter. When the Ohio man's attempt to make a payment on his cable bill to Time Warner was rejected, he learned that the company had calculated his past-due amount at more than $16 million. "All I want to do is watch March Madness," Mr DeVirgillio said. A local newspaper reported that DeVirgilio did the math and concluded that he'd have to order 1.6 million on-demand movies or a pay-per-view fight 400,000 times to accumulate $16.4 million in charges.

Money From the Sky

18 OCT 2010 - What would you do if money would fall from the sky? Would you stuff your pocket and run? Ot take an other approach? Unfortunately money does not grow on trees, but it seemed to fall from the sky in the United States city of Indianapolis. Police say three bundles of money feel from the back of an armoured car near an intersection in the city. A car hit one of the bundles, sending bills into the air. Witnesses (so there were bystanders; people just witnessing the whole event without getting directly involved) said about 10 people stormed through traffic to fill their arms with cash dollars. Two others stopped to help collect he money and guard it until police arrived.

1st July March

1 July 2010 - Today it is 13 years since the Hong Kong hand-over. In recent years the 1st July date has been marked by protest marches. This year the turn-out for the match is expected to be relatively low, as the debate on universal suffrage already peaked a few days ago in the Legilsative Council. However, there are still plenty of other topics to be concerned about. A study by the Boston Consulting Group shows that Hong Kong has the world second largest wealth gap after Saudi Arabia. Hong Kong has 205,000 USD millionaires, but this group of rich controls 73% of the city's wealth. Or in other words, the remaining 27% of wealth is shared by more than 7 million people. Hong Kong surpasses even the US, where the millionaires control 56% of the wealth. Now you know whey we have such an angry underclass - and we may see them marching the streets today.

Hong Kong Millionaires

28 June 2010 - It was reported that Hong Kong saw the largest increase in millionaires in the world last year, while the net worth of Asian milionaires overtook their European counterparts. The rise was mainly caused by the recovery of Asian asset prices. The annual World Wealth Report - as produced by Merrill Lynch - found that the number of millionaires in Hong Kong soared with a whopping 104, 4%, the highest increase in the world. To be clear: we are talking about USD millionaires here. Hong Kong millionaires are still among the relatively "poor" ones, as they can mainly be found in the USD 1 mio - USD 5 mio band. The majority of millionaires are still concentrated in USA, Germany and Japan, but the mainland is now firmly in fourth place with 477,000 millionaires (up 31% from the year before). The fundraising market in Hong Kong is getting more competitive in recent years, as it seems an increasing number of NGOs have discovered that Hong Kong is a rich pond to fish in. Ding Ding Dollars!