Monday, September 22, 2008

The Midas Touch

So, early one morning I was daydreaming and trying to get my head around how much money $17,000 per hour was. I had read the NY Time Op-Ed piece by Nicholas Kristof of how money Richard Fuld, former CEO of Lehman Brothers, made last year: $45,000,000. Kristof states that this is roughly equivalent to $17,000 per hour. It takes me months to make $17,000. That's an enormous pile of money in just one hour.

It was hard for me to get my mind around how big this really is. For an eight hour day that's $136,000. Assuming a 40 hour week that's $680,000 per week. The the sudden realization hit me.

I could shit solid 24k gold and I still wouldn't even come close to making that much money in a single day.

Think about it. The current price of gold is $900 per ounce. I estimating that the average person shits between two and five pounds per day. So that gives an range of between $28,000 and $72,000 per day if you shit solid gold. That doesn't even come close toe Mr Fulds $17,000 per hour or $136,000 for an eight hour day.

So, how much would you have to shit to equal Mr Fuld's hourly rate? Almost nine and a half pounds( 9.44 to be exact). That's a big load, more than double what a person normally shits, probably more than three times.

Amazing that a CEO that watched a 158 year old company go bankrupt didn't do a whole lot to stop it. But, then again, what motivation did he have to prevent it?