On the front page of MegaCorp’s intranet [now that I’m legally employed there I won’t be dropping their real name too often] is this story:

Capital Levels

MegaCorp will exceed targeted capital levels on a pro forma basis for the 4Q 2007 and has raised or priced nearly $30 billion of capital over the last 2 months.

Now, I haven’t got the faintest arse of an idea what any of that means. I mean what does “priced” mean in that context ? To me, pricing is what they do in a supermarket with sticky labels, is that what they mean ? They just put a sticky label saying “$30 billion” on a big pile of money ? I could do that.

Money works in a different way when you have a lot of it. You can create more just be hyping it. Jobs work differently too. For example if you or I do a bad job, we get fired.
If the CEO of MegaCorp does a such a bad job that the company loses billions and causes a global economic crisis, he too gets fired. But the difference is that he keeps his $1.74 million pension, $94 million stock and $53 million savings.