Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

calvin.sh

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 578 posts

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#361

Post by jjk166 »

alcover wrote: post #337
jjk166 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such scanners exist but most ATMs do not have them. Of course if you fill the ATM with a stack of fresh bills you know the serial numbers for, and you know how many bills were dispensed prior to a particular transaction, you should know which bills got dispensed during that transaction. Of course the tracking of this information down to that level would be pretty pointless. The moment someone breaks a 20 the connecti…

> tracking of this information down to that level would be pretty pointless Maybe pretty pointfull tracking shadow economy. When Bob sells moonlight stuff his clients will more often than not simply go to the ATM, withdraw the sum and hand it to him. Bob will then buy at shop with big bill. Shop owner will deposit bill at bank..

And how do you know which bill from the shop is Bob's? Or which hands the bill passed through before or after going through Bob? The only thing you'll be able to determine is that some of the money withdrawn from the local atms eventually gets spent at the local shops, which you could probably intuit.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#362

Post by smj-edison »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #260
meta_ai_x wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. We have a double accounting system. For every $1 it creates, it has to create an equivalent liability. And when something is budgeted for $1 Million, it is $1m nothing more nothing less

So, in your mind, when the Federal Reserve prints a dollar bill - what's happening in accounting terms? I don't think your understanding of the way this works is consistent with the concept of money supply.

To be precise, the treasury prints the bills, not the federal reserve. The federal reserve balances what money is in circulation by selling or buying bonds. When they issue a bond, someone buys it, so money is removed from circulation. When they buy a bond, money is injected into circulation.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#363

Post by jongjong »

dankwizard wrote: post #345
jongjong wrote: post #336

This guy could have pulled the greatest heist in the history of mankind. Steal the cube, take out $500K, leave $1 million inside (fluff it up a bit or put some Styrofoam in the center), then return the cube, saying it was a stunt to draw attention to climate change or similar and you intended to return it. Then they would count the dollars, you'd get a minor sentence (maybe)... Then you get to keep $500k.

"Hi yes, I'm Mr. Museum and although we called it the $1,000,000 cube it actually contained about ~$1.5m. This man has stolen $500,000. Send him to the gulags"

Haha, would love to see that play out in front of a jury. Who will they believe? The guy who says that the $1 million cube contained $1 million or the ones who try to make the case that it actually contained $1.5 million, contradicting their own claim.

Imagine them opening up the cube and seeing the Styrofoam in the center... I'd be like; "Typical Fed behavior! Fractional reserve banking... Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this is exactly the same thing they've been doing with your paychecks."

I think where the metaphor falls apart is the part where they bribe the jury into delivering a guilty verdict; offering them jobs at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, each earning $500k per year.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#364

Post by jameshart »

bandofthehawk wrote: post #277
kasey_junk wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coins don’t cost what they are worth to make.

Pennies and nickels cost more to make than they are worth.

People are quick to state this as if it's a slam dunk case for 'we shouldn't make them any more', but I don't understand the thinking there. An individual coin can be used many many times to facilitate many many transactions before it eventually falls out of circulation through loss or damage. The amount you should spend on making coins of a given denomination has nothing to do with what the total face value of those coins is, but needs to be traded off against the value to the economy of having those coins in circulation. If spending more money on producing higher quality coins enables them to remain in circulation twice as long, it might be worthwhile even if the cost exceeds the face value.

It's a different story if the material value of the metal in the coin exceeds its face value - at that point it makes sense to go to a bank, change money into pennies, then scrap them and sell the copper. That would be bad.

But the reason pennies are a bad deal isn't because of their manufacturing cost, it's because their handling costs exceed the value of incorporating them in a transaction. Should a store go to the trouble of keeping pennies available, counting them, storing them, transferring them to the bank? Or should they round up change to the nearest five cents and take a 4c hit on each transaction where you'd have been able to use pennies? If your average transaction value is over a hundred dollars or so, like most supermarkets, and you only handle cash on one sale in 50 say, if handling pennies in your cash-management operation takes more than a few thousandths of one percent of your budget, it's costing you too much.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#365

Post by nojs »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #358

Back in the late 70s my uncle was at an auto show in Chicago at the McCormick place. There was a VW filled with beer cans of some particular brand. You could submit your name and your guess of the number of cans of beer and whomever was closest to the actual count won the beer (but not the car). My uncle won. How did he guess so well? He was there very early on and he noticed a stack of cardboard trays stacked up in…

This was the plot of a Monk episode if I recall correctly, except jelly beans

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#366

Post by tobinfekkes »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #349
achierius wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds more like "a couple". Personally I think "a few" would be anywhere from 3-9, which is more reasonable, if still handily above the median national income (like 250k a year if you save and invest well).

Definitions are surprisingly varied. I see these words as being something to be cautious about. For me: couple(formal) = 2 couple(informal) = 2-3 few = 3-5 half-dozen = 6 [gap] ten-or-so = 9-11 dozen(formal) = 12 dozen-ish(informal) = 11-14 And don't get me started on "this Friday" vs "next Friday"...

My wife and I just discovered that we have different beliefs about "this Friday" vs. "Next Friday". I never even knew there was another possibility, so it's cool to see this mentioned here so soon after.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#367

Post by eru »

ciupicri wrote: post #341
eloisant wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only true for the smaller denominations, 1c and 5c for USD. Other than that, coins are cheaper than bills on the long run, because they last longer. It would be cheaper for the US government to stop making $1 bills and have people use the $1 coins, but I guess old habits die hard.

I guess that's why we have €1 and €2 coins (1 EUR ≈ 1.18 USD).

Well that, and Germans need the 1 Euro coin to unlock their shopping trolley.

(Or at least they used to; when I visited back recently many supermarkets had free trolleys! Can you imagine my shock?)

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#368

Post by BLKNSLVR »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #330
jolt42 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to verify is open that sucker up and count.

They should send all of DOGE to work on this very important problem immediately. /s

Whatever happened to the audit of Fort Knox?

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#369

Post by sdenton4 »

cxr wrote: post #332
sdenton4 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post specifically says there's not a tool for counting red dots on an image, and there absolutely are. From the side-counts, you still have to extrapolate to a volume, but a specific highlighted sub-problem is well addressed by apps.

> The post specifically says there's not a tool for counting red dots on an image Oh really? Is that what it says? Let's take a look: > All I wanted was a way to click on things in a photo and have the number go up. Those are the requirements. That's what the app is supposed to do. I don't see "a tool for counting red dots" anywhere. The closest thing is this passage: > It's stupidly simple: upload an image, click to…

You seem... needlessly offended.

Pass in your image with red dots, and the red dots will be counted by the ML-counting thing just fine. It's a minor variation in approach to solving the problem, and that's OK: When confronted with a problem, people often jump to specific solutions too quickly, and miss out on better or more general approaches. This is quite pertinent in this specific case, as well - you can ask the ML-counting thing to count the rectangles instead of the dots, and perhaps save yourself all the clicking in the first place.

Post reply on HN