Many celebrities, athletes, famous musicians, politicians, and intellectuals have filed bankruptcy to turn their lives around.
These people realized that the bankruptcy laws were there to help them get back on their feet and to give them a fresh start.
You too are entitled to a fresh start!

You are Not Alone: the following people have filed bankruptcy!

From:Techcrunch

There’s a good chance you’ve seen prepaid credit cards on the shelves at 7-11, Walmart, CVS, Rite Aid, Radio Shack or a variety of other retail outlets. Those cards are usually issued by Green Dot, a Los Angeles based startup that went public earlier this year and is worth over $2 billion.

They allow people who normally can’t get credit cards – like teens and those with poor credit – a way to pay for things like the rest of us do, with a Visa or Mastercard. And people love them. The company made $64 million in profit in 2009 on sales of nearly $235 million. The company boasts over ten million customers.

That isn’t what makes Green Dot special though. You have to hear the story of the ten year old company from founder and CEO Steve Streit and early investor/board member Michael Moritz from Sequoia Capital.

There were ups and downs, many of them, over the years. And we’ll have both Streit and Moritz on stage this morning at TechCrunch Disrupt to talk about the good times, the bad times and, more recently, the exceptional times.

A few notes about the company taken from an investor presentation during the IPO process:

• Green Dot began its life ten years ago at a small table in the bedroom of my home in Pasadena, California. The idea was to provide MasterCard and Visa debit cards to people who otherwise couldn’t get a card from a traditional bank.
• Our first big innovation was creating a way for consumers to buy and fund a bank debit card right off the rack at a neighborhood store. The first card we ever sold was a so called “prepaid” MasterCard at a Rite Aid store in Loudoun County, Virginia.
• Now ten years later, Green Dot products are sold at roughly 50,000 retail stores coast to coast with a Green Dot location within a short walk of just about everyone.
• These locations along with our Green Dot website enabled us to acquire over 5 million new accounts and process over $7 billion in deposits to those accounts over the past 12 months.
• Our second big innovation was in 2004 when we created the first “cash reload network” where any prepaid card issuer- including our competitors- could have their customers go to a Green Dot retailer to load money onto their prepaid debit card.
• Today, over 100 prepaid card programs rely on our “Green Dot Network” for reloading cash- with over 25 million reload transactions sold over the last 12 months.
• Our third innovation, developed along the way to serve our expanding business, is our Green Planet technology platform that today serves as the “operating system” for how regulated bank issued debit cards are purchased, activated and reloaded at retail stores.

This is one of the companies that Mortiz is most proud of. He’s been with them since the early days and put $10 million or so into the company. Total investments from others accounted for another $8.5 million, and Sequoia invested additional cash to buy out some of those early investors.

By the time Green Dot began the IPO process Sequoia Capital owned over 30% of the company. It netted up to 35.2% at the closing of the IPO. Sequoia has never sold a single share in Green Dot, before or after the IPO.

So what’s that investment worth now? Roughly 35% of $2.1 billion in highly liquid public company common stock. By my count that’s about $700,000,000 in gain from a $10 million investment (plus another $10 or so put in to buy out other shareholders over time.

That’s a 35x on $20 million investment. That is what the big boys in Silicon Valley call a big fucking home run deal.

You may be familiar with other Moritz/Sequoia deals recently – Flip selling to Cisco for $590 million or so. And Zappos being acquired by Amazon for nearly $1 billion.

Those deals, which most VCs would kill for, don’t get Moritz out of bed in the morning. He expects every single company he works with to go for the big score – an IPO and a life an an independent public company. Zappos and Flip didn’t make it over the hump. Green Dot, by God, did.

Laws of awesomeness ensure that founders with the right level of intelligence, risk tolerance and patience can stay the course and get over the IPO hump. These are the companies that will forge the future of Silicon Valley and help spawn countless new startups down the road. We celebrate Green Dot and we celebrate Sequoia Capital for taking an idea and running with it, patiently, until they became a $2 billion company.

We, too, were too busy breaking news about Google’s most recent $15 million acquisition of meto.com, or whatever, to even notice what Green Dot was doing down there in the glitzier part of our state. Shame on us – this company is providing a low cost solution for people unable to get credit cards to be able to participate more easily in our economy. It’s a good thing.

Tune in around 9:30 am later today (Tuesday) to watch me interview Mike and Steve at TechCrunch Disrupt. You can watch the live stream here. It will be a rare treat to hear Moritz himself, a Silicon Valley legend, talk about how he helps companies through good times and bad, not selling a single share until well past the IPO.

To put it another way, getting the chance to listen to Moritz talk about how he does what he does is like being able to watch Michael Jordan play baskedball with you, one on one. You’ll want to be there as he dunks the ball hard a few feet over your head.

Article from forbes.com

The rapper and the investor sit down in Omaha for a free-wheeling talk with Steve Forbes.

The first Forbes 400 Summit was surreal, amazing and, in the end, moving. We gassed up a Gulfstream 450 one warm September morning and flew one of the most successful recording artists of all time, Jay-Z, to meet the most successful investor of all time, Warren Buffett, on the latter's home turf of Omaha, Neb. The intent was to capture their very different perspectives on success and wealth and to talk about the social obligations that come with each. They ended up finding out they had more in common than anyone would have expected between a 40-year-old rapper from the Brooklyn projects and the 80-year-old sage of compounded returns.

The main event was an hourlong, videotaped talk at Buffett's office building. (What you read here comes from that session.) But first there was lunch. The early crowd at the Hollywood Diner ("Where the customer is the star") was unmoved by Buffett, a fixture with his usual order of chicken-fried steak with extra mashed potatoes. When Jay-Z strode in, well over 6 feet tall in a tailored blue suit, blue tie, white shirt, blue pocket square and black loafers, you could hear whispers buzz around. He slid into Buffett's round booth, across from Steve Forbes. Watching over them was a plastic statue of Elvis Presley, whom this year Jay-Z eclipsed in having the most number-one albums sold by a recording artist.

Neither Jay-Z nor Buffett would admit to being nervous. It was their behavior that gave them away. Jay-Z the wordsmith said little at first but stared at Buffett intently, taking in every word. He ordered what Buffett ordered: a strawberry malt, thin. He barely touched it. Buffett never stopped talking, telling childhood stories about stealing syrup from nickel Coke machines and peeling off zingers. "When you see me reach for the check," he told the photographer, "you'll know I'm posing." They warmed up quickly and were soon laughing every minute or so. As they left Jay-Z headed over toward his Escalade. Warren called him back, "I'll give you a lift. Sit up in the front with me. My rates are very competitive."

Steve Forbes: You two are unique. In very different spheres you've each reached a level of success that's almost legendary. What did you do that made you different?

Warren Buffett: Well, I was lucky that I got started early. My dad happened to be in the investment business, so I would go down to his office on Saturdays. At age 7 or so I started reading these books that were around the place. I knew what I wanted to do early. That's a huge advantage.

You don't need a lot of brains in this business. I've always said if you've got an IQ of 160, give away 30 points to somebody else, because you don't need it in investments. What you need is emotional stability. You have to be able to think independently, and when you come to a conclusion you have to really not care what other people say. Just follow the facts and your reasoning. That's tough for a lot of people. But that part, I was just lucky with. I was born that way.

SF: But what was that extra thing? So many will acknowledge that, and yet, as we saw in the current crisis, they panicked while you went into seemingly potential disasters like GE and Goldman Sachs.

WB: I can't really tell you. I didn't learn it in school or anything. It never bothered me if people disagreed with what I thought, as long as I felt I knew the facts. There's a whole bunch of things I don't know a thing about. I just stay away from those. I stay within what I call my circle of competence. Tom Watson [IBM founder] said it best. He said, "I'm no genius, but I'm smart in spots, and I stay around those spots."

SF: We were talking at dinner the other day about how in tennis, most of us are never going to get to Wimbledon. But if we just focus, get the ball over the net, don't try to be fancy about it, we'll do fine.

WB: That's a little bit like these rules I have. The first rule is don't lose, and the second rule is never forget the first rule. It isn't so much having a lot of brilliant decisions, it's just not having some terrible ones. I learned from Ben Graham how to avoid ever having any disasters in investments. He also taught me to see a stock not as something with a ticker symbol that wiggles around but to think about it as part of a business. Don't get elated because something had gone up or depressed because it went down. If I knew the facts, and it went down, I bought more of it. He also taught me that famous lesson about a margin of safety, that you don't drive a truck that weighs 9,900 pounds across a bridge that says "Limit 10,000 pounds" because you can't be that sure. If you see something like that, go a little further down the road and find one that says, "Limit 20,000 pounds." That's one you drive across.

SF: Jay, you're in a business even more competitive. There's not a young person in the country who at some point in their lives doesn't want to be a star. And you not only have done it but done it consistently.

Jay-Z: As I was listening to Warren, I could just hear all the similarities and all the things in what he's saying, right? Because if you don't look at the tickers, you're really just searching for the truth within all the numbers and all the chaos. And that's the key to being a recording artist. You're telling your story or finding your truth at the moment.

My story's a little opposite from Warren because I started a little later. My first album didn't come out until I was 26, so I had a bit more maturity. The album had all these emotions and complexities and layers that a typical hip-hop album didn't have if you were making it at 16, 17 years old. That isn't enough wealth of experience to share with the world. I had so much wealth to share with the world at that time, and I've never forgotten those things, like you say. You never forget those true things that you stick to, your basic things that make you successful.

And for me, it's that truth, finding the truth of the moment, of where I am at the time, not trying to cater to a certain demographic or being something I'm not, not driving the truck over a 10,000-pound bridge. There are so many similarities in what he was just saying. So for me, it's just having the discipline, and the confidence in who I am. If I go into a studio and find my truth of the moment, there are a number of people in the world who can relate to what I'm saying, and are going to buy into what I'm doing. Not because it's the new thing of the moment, but because it's genuine emotion. It's how I feel. This is how I articulate the world.

SF: Jay, you mentioned at lunch that you got your love of words at a young age from a sixth-grade teacher who brought that out in you, and it has stayed with you for a lifetime.

JZ: I grew up in the Marcy Projects in Brooklyn. Our classrooms were flooded. It was very difficult for teachers to give you one-on-one attention. And there was this one sixth-grade teacher named Miss Lowden. She must have seen something in me, and she gave me this attention and this love for words. It's funny how it works, just a little bit of attention. She also took us on a field trip to her house, which opened me up to the world. My neighborhood had been my world. It's the only thing I had seen. I saw a whole different world that day, and my imagination grew from there. I wanted that. I aspired to have that. The small things. She had an ice thing on her refrigerator. You know, you push it and the ice and the water comes down. I was really amazed by that. I was like, I want one of those. It's true.

SF: Even though you didn't record your first album until you were 26, you were in effect writing music in your mind.

JZ: I was around music my whole life. My mom and pop had a huge record collection, so I started out listening to music early on, and I would just write. I had a love for it from there. I didn't get to it, you know. I got caught into my neighborhood and my surroundings. But I've always taken it with me, and I've always gone back to it. It just got to a point where it was, like, "Make this decision, because this is something you really love and you love to do. "It's time to really focus on and then get serious about it, give it your all." And once I did that, it was no looking back from there.

SF: Jay, a lot of people fade away after one or two albums. That hasn't happened to you.

JZ: I think it goes back to a bit of what Warren was saying. It's the discipline not to get caught up in the moment. You know, music is like stocks, too. There's the hot thing of the moment. There's this hot, electro sound, or the hot auto-tune voice, or the hot whatever's new and exciting. People tend to make emotional decisions based on that. They don't stick with what they know, you know, this is who I am. This is what I do. They jump on this next hot thing. And it's not for you.

SF: You once said that as an artist you're fighting against everything that's new and everyone's fascination with new things.

JZ: Yeah, shiny things. People fall in love with shiny things.

SF: As you grow older, can you bring an audience with you because the topic of your music grows with you?

JZ: Yeah, because hip-hop is, like, 30 years old. It's a fairly new genre of music. We've never seen the maturation of hip-hop in this sort of way. People would get to a certain age and still try to pinpoint at this young demographic because hip-hop is a young man's sport. But, you know, people that listen to hip-hop when they're 18 listen to it when they're 28. It's just that the voices of hip-hop are not speaking directly to them anymore. Or weren't. They're speaking to an 18 year old. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm just going to make the music I love to make and I'm going to mature with my music. Luckily for me, it was the right decision.

SF: When did you realize you had to treat music as a business, to avoid ending up as so many do, losing everything they have?

JZ: That was the greatest trick in music that people ever pulled off, to convince artists that you can't be an artist and make money. I think the people that were making the millions said that. It was almost shameful, especially in rock 'n' roll. Here you got these millionaire guys who had to pretend as if they weren't successful at all or it would be like a detriment to their career. Hip-hop from the beginning has always been aspirational. It always broke that notion that an artist can't think about money as well. Just so long as you separate the two and you're not making music with business in mind. At some point it has to be real when they touch it, when they listen to it. Something has to resonate with them that's real. When you're in the studio you're an artist, you make music, and then after you finish, you market it to the world. I don't think anything is wrong with that. In fact, I know there's nothing wrong with that.

SF: When you were president of Def Jam Records you saw what was wrong with the music business. You wanted out and were willing to pay money to get yourself out.

JZ: For a long time a hit record solved all your problems because there was no Internet, YouTube and so many other factors. It was just the music. That model still exists of just putting artists out and seeing what works. As the machine started moving faster, a lot of things got lost in the process, like artist development. It got to a point where as a business we were releasing hundreds of albums every year, and the percentages were really low, like out of 56 albums four artists worked. At Def Jam I wanted to bring the entire culture into it. I wanted a fund so I could do other things aside from signing artists, like buying a television station or a club where we can develop these artists, or putting out some headphones, all these different things. I don't think at that time they could really get their mind around that. It's not something they were willing to do. I just felt like I would be a waste there. So I started my own thing, Roc Nation, and that's what we do. We pretty much have everything: music publishing, songwriters, recording, touring.

SF: Didn't you end up paying $5 million to buy your last album from Def Jam?

JZ: I have a better story for you. The year I went over to create Roc Nation with Live Nation, I still had one album left to make with Def Jam. L.A. Reid, the chairman of Def Jam at the time, did a great thing for me. He allowed me to walk in and have the conversation with [chairman of parent company Universal Music Group] Doug Morris. We had a fantastic relationship. So it was very cool. I bought my last album back. What people don't know is the day before I flew from Hawaii, where I was doing some recording and put it on an iPod. I had on jogging pants, and my iPod, with all the music I recorded, was missing. It was on the plane somewhere. I had to walk into Doug's office the next day and buy an album back that might leak the next day. Every day I would wake up and check all the Internet places and everywhere. I was like that for three months.

But it was worth it, you know. I was heading in a different direction and needed that freedom. It was a great decision for the company. They got some money. And a great decision for me. I got a very successful album, Blueprint 3, which had "Empire State of Mind" on it. That sold about 4 million singles itself. And my first solo number-one single came off that. I believe in everything lining up.

SF: There is that element of luck you can't quantify. Warren, you've thought about luck.

WB: There's lots of luck. Just being born in the United States in 1930 the odds were 30-to-1 against me. I didn't have anything to do with picking the United States as I emerged. And having decent genes for certain things. I was sort of wired for capital allocation, and being wired for capital allocation two hundred years ago in Nebraska wouldn't have meant a thing. But here I was in this soon-to-be-very-rich capitalistic system, and what I did paid off enormously in a market system like we have. If I'd had a talent in some other area that was way less commercial, I would've had a good time doing it, but it wouldn't have paid off like this.

Jay said it perfectly when he talked about how he's in there recording for himself, and the money comes afterwards. I got to do what I love, and it doesn't get any luckier than that. I would be doing what I do now and I would've done it in the past if the payoff had been in seashells, or sharks' teeth, or anything else. I've had all kinds of luck. I had the luck of getting turned down by Harvard, which meant I got to study under Ben Graham at Columbia, which changed my life. All kinds of things have worked out. So I just hope I stay lucky. I've been lucky for 80 years.

SF: Jay, where you grew up, you could have easily ended up being put away.

JZ: Yeah. There are very few people from my neighborhood that make it out. Forget about being successful, I mean making it out alive or just incarcerated. I have a great friend who just came home, one of the most beautiful people you'd ever meet; he just came home from doing 13 years. And we were together every single day. Back then there was a guy by the name of Jazz who I started out with. He had a deal with EMI. He had the opportunity to go to London to record his album. I went along with him for two months. In those two months there was a sting operation and they took my friend I'm talking about, for 13 years. The only reason I wasn't there was because I was away doing this music stuff. Had it not been for music, and music taking me out at the right time, my life could very easily have been his, very easily.

SF: Jay, how are you going to survive in a business where the old rules are no longer true?

JZ: There was a time in music where a hit solved everything. That's no longer true. I think the music business is still stuck in that place because we haven't figured it out. One of the biggest things in business is to open yourself up for change. We don't have to change who we are, we have to change the way we go about it.

At Roc Nation we're taking our time with artist development, but there are many parts of the business that we're in. For a long time, music labels weren't into touring and now they're making up these 360 deals [where labels get a piece of everything: albums, tours, merchandise]. I don't want this to be a record-company-bashing thing but this whole 360 model is not what the record company does. The record company is not in the touring business. So why would an artist sign with you when that's not your area of expertise? We're with the biggest concert promoter there is, and there's just so many different aspects we're into to make ourselves successful: touring, producing, publishing, clothing, movies.

WB: I don't want to compete with him, Steve. I'm not interested.

SF: Jay, you're also wise enough, or big enough, where you don't mind sharing billing with Eminem or Bono.

JZ: It's fun for me, for one thing. I don't have that ego where I have to be the only guy on the bill. I'm cool with going out with other artists. I've been doing it my entire career. Before Eminem, before Bono, it was R. Kelly or 50 Cent or DMX. I just believe in giving people a better package so when they leave the concert hall, they want to come back again. A lot of people make that mistake when they're hot. They just sell off the name and sell off the moment. We're over-delivering on the experience.

SF: Warren, what advice would you have for Jay-Z in the music business? You've seen business models change a bit in the newspaper business with the Washington Post and Buffalo News.

WB: It happens. Street railways were big here in Omaha 100 years ago. But I will say this about investing: Everything you do earn is cumulative. That doesn't mean that industries stay good forever, or businesses stay good forever, but in learning to think about business models, what I learned at 20 is useful to me now. What I learned at 25 is useful to me now. It's like physics. There are underlying principles, but now they're doing all kinds of things with physics they weren't doing 50 years ago.

But if you've got the principles, if you know what makes a good business, if you know what makes a good manager, if you know what makes a good product, and you learn that in one business, there is some transference to other businesses. As you go along, you learn what things you're not going to understand. Knowing what to leave out is just as important as knowing what to focus on. Somebody said how to beat Bobby Fischer; you play him any game except chess. And so I don't play Bobby Fischer at chess.

SF: Warren, you said you wouldn't want to compete with Jay. What advice would you give?

JZ: He's super-duper joking.

SF: You've said businesses need to build moats around them. What kind of moats should Jay-Z be building?

WB: Well, he's building moats all the time. Obviously. That's why he's succeeding even though he's moved beyond the age that you normally associate his field with. The best moat you can have is your own talent. They can't take it away from you; inflation and taxes can't take it from you. I urge students when I talk to them to look at the people you admire and list what makes you admire them. Those are things that you should do. Just write them down.

SF: Jay, you have any advice you want to give to Warren on building moats?

JZ: What am I going to say to this guy, man?

WB: He can do things I can't do, believe me! I can't do anything he does.

SF: This gets to what money is for. There are only so many steaks we can eat. Warren, your ability to employ capital, multiply it, was a great service. A few years ago you decided to do something else with the money.

WB: If you go back to when I was in my 20s, this sounds obnoxious, but I really did know I was going to become rich. I'd learned something that was going to work. And my wife and I decided then that we were going to enjoy life. We were going to have everything we'd possibly use or need. Incidentally, I think a $5 dinner is better than a $100 dinner.

I felt, one way or another, all that money would go back to society. I thought my wife would outlive me, and she was the one who loved the process of seeing people with problems that money would help. I thought we would pile it up and she would do the distribution of it. But the big money was going to be later on, and then she died while I was still alive, and then I had to make a decision as to the best way to get this money spent in an intelligent way, relatively promptly. I came up with the idea of splitting among five foundations, the largest of which is the Gates Foundation. That was four years ago. I couldn't be more pleased with the decision.

SF: You made a provision that all of your funds had to be employed, what, within ten years?

WB: Ten years after my estate's completed the money has to all be spent. It can't go to institutions which in turn put it in their endowment or anything like that. I want it with people that I know are in sync with me, and I know will be true to certain ideals. I want them to dispense it because who the hell knows 50 years from now, you know, when the place becomes some large institution, what will happen.

SF: Have you denied society something in that the capital, if you'd keep employing it, might have done more good in invested in more companies?

WB: Well, Berkshire is still around. I'm still running it.

JZ: Yeah, it's not doing so badly.

WB: I think it's been a perfect solution. When my wife was pregnant, I didn't think I was going to deliver a baby. If I get a toothache or something, I don't take out my own tooth. I turn it over. I follow Adam Smith's advice; turn it over to a specialist. And there's no reason to think that because I'm good at making money, that I would be the best, necessarily, at distributing it. Foundations are not tested by a market system. I mean, if you've got a business idea, and he's got music, it's being tested by a market system. People will make a decision is whether that next album is good, and they'll make a decision, you know, on whether Coca-Cola still keeps them happy, and all that sort of thing. A foundation has no market tests. So it's very easy to start rationalizing things that are a long way from what you thought you were setting out to do.

SF: Jay, you're just beginning to look at charities. You have the Shawn Carter Scholarship Fund. Where do you see it going?

JZ: The reason I've focused on that is because such a small thing changed my life, right? A sixth-grade teacher said, "You know what, you're kind of smart." And I believed her. I said, "I'm smart, right?"

So she gave me that sort of opportunity. She sparked that idea in my mind. So that's why my first thing is a scholarship fund, because there are a ton of very intelligent kids coming out of these urban areas who can make it all the way if given the opportunity. It's a challenge that I gave to my mom. And my mom is so involved with it. She gets on the bus, and she takes these kids to their interview with colleges. And now we're starting to see kids graduate from college, and I'm getting that sort of feeling when it's real, you know. I'm not just sitting home, writing a check to make myself feel good. It's something I really want to do, and I'm into it and excited about it.

SF: Philanthropy and business are almost opposite sides of the same coin, meeting the needs and wants of others, a little different way of doing it.

WB: It's tougher than business, Steve. You're looking for easy things to do in business. If people have liked drinking Coca-Cola for 100 years, they'll probably like it for another 100. It doesn't require great brainpower to figure that out. In philanthropy you're tackling the tougher problems of society, things where people have applied money and intelligence before and haven't really solved the problem. Education is a great example. Gates is working on eradicating polio. They have gotten 99% of the way there. But that last 1% is very tough, and nobody knows for sure if it will get done.

SF: Warren, one of the things you do in your annual reports is discussing what went wrong and what you've learned.

WB: Part of making good decisions in business is recognizing the poor decisions you've made and why they were poor. I've made lots of mistakes. I'm going to make more. It's the name of the game. You don't want to expect perfection in yourself. You want to strive to do your best. It's too demanding to expect perfection in yourself.

SF: How do you each plan to get your message out about philanthropy? Warren, you and Bill Gates did a bold thing with your Giving Pledge drive.

WB: The way I got the message out was to get a copy of FORBES, look down that 400 list and start making phone calls! Bill and Melinda did the same thing. We only called 80 or so people so far, some I know, and some I don't know. We've gotten a way better reception than I thought. In many cases we picked people that we knew already had pretty strong philanthropic interest and, in a very low-key way, asked them to sign a pledge, not legal but moral, that they would give away half their net worth in their lifetimes or at death. About half of the people we asked said they'd be delighted, and we asked them to tell their stories on our website [givingpledge.org]. They are fascinating to read. I don't think you'd see anything like this in parts of the world outside of the United States. We'll see how far it goes, but even if it only goes as far as it's gone it will have a big impact. I've already learned something from the three or four dinners we've had with people. We will have smarter philanthropy in this country 10, 20 years from now, and in a small way this will contribute to it. So keep publishing the list so I can milk it.

SF: Jay will soon be on it. Jay, how do you get the message out to your audience that giving doesn't have to be dollars? It could be time, like the way your sixth-grade teacher did?

JZ: As entertainers, we're the first generation to capitalize on our talent. For many years artists were dying broke, because the record companies took advantage of them. I'm not talking about rock stars, like Bono. The first thing for me is to lead by example and show how these things have an effect on people's lives in a real way. I know there is a future generation of stars in my old neighborhood that we must help out, to become what they could be if given the opportunity. So my first thing is to show by example and pull a guy in like Puff [Daddy]. We made a huge pledge to Katrina together. I think we could have done more. It showed hip-hop the power in doing things together. We'll move forward from there.

SF: Fifty years from now, when people say Warren Buffett, what words will come to mind?

WB: They'll probably say Berkshire Hathaway. I hope it's still around then, doing very well, too. If it isn't I'll come back and haunt 'em! No, but what I've done has not been very complicated. I followed somebody else's teachings. I guess if you could pick one word it would be "teacher." Jay has talked about his sixth-grade teacher. I think almost anyone that's been successful has had a teacher, somebody that's affected them. If you can pass that along, I think that's better than money, actually.

SF: Jay?

JZ: I hope to inspire. I guess Obama took this thing already but just the hope of how far we can make it and the hope in knowing how far you can go from where you started if you really apply yourself and stay true to who you are.

WB: Jay is teaching in a lot bigger classroom than I'll ever teach in. They're going to learn from somebody. For a young person growing up he's the guy to learn from.

Lindsay Lohan settled a $100 million lawsuit against E-Trade Financial Corp for allegedly modeling a "milkaholic" baby girl in an ad after her.

The case was withdrawn with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought again, Reuters said. Details of the settlement were not immediately available.

"It was a simple business decision. We always have to consider the cost and time involved in litigation, and we are pleased to have the matter behind us," E-Trade spokeswoman Allison Jeannotte said.

Lohan sued in March, saying that the portrayal of a baby girl named Lindsay breached her privacy.

The ad shows a baby boy apologizing to his girlfriend via video chat for not calling her, saying he was busy using E-Trade. The baby girlfriend asks if "that milkaholic Lindsay" was around at the time.

Another baby girl then walks into the frame, presumably Lindsay, who asks Milk-a-what?"

Before you apply for any kind of small business loan -- be it with the Small Business Administration, or SBA, a bank, or even family or friends -- be prepared by gathering up all your bookkeeping, financial and other records. It will make the business loan application process less stressful and more likely to be approved by the lender.

Here's what you'll need:

Personal credit report. This is not for lenders, who can obtain this information on their own, but for you. Know your credit rating from one of the three major credit-reporting companies: TransUnion, Experian and Equifax. Once you get your credit report, make sure you dispute any errors, and be prepared to explain the reasons for late payments or defaults on your history.

Business credit report. Just like your personal credit history, it's important to look this over and correct any errors before you apply for a small business loan.

Loan application form. Get this from the lender and fill it out completely. The questions on the form will vary from lender to lender, but basically questions include: Why do you need a small business loan? What are your plans for the money? What other business debt/creditors do you have?

Business financial documents. Gather up your past tax returns (previous three years), one year of bank statements, a balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement, accounts receivable and accounts payable.

Business legal documents. Not all lenders require this kind of detailed documentation, but have it handy just in case:

Any legal contracts with third parties.
Licenses, registrations.
Articles of incorporation.
Lease agreements.
Taxpayer ID number (proof of).
Equipment inventory (with serial numbers).
Collateral (cost/value of business -- and personal -- property that you plan to use to secure the loan).
Proof of insurance for any collateral property or items.

Gather all this information in one place to get it ready before you submit your small business loan application. You will have it at the ready -- and create less stress and anxiety for yourself -- if your lender requests it. But, remember, keep the process simple by only giving your lender the specific paperwork requested.

The listing price for this 5,800 square foot Phoenix home is $1,147,000, according to Zillow.com. It has 6 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms.

Throughout the U.S. housing crisis, home values have fallen sharply and short sales are becoming commonplace. However, many in local real estate markets — from New York and San Francisco to Anchorage and Omaha— are optimistic about a gradual recovery in home prices.

One price range of particular interest is the $1 million market, where affordability and luxury come to a crossroads. In some places, $1 million may buy you a mansion, in others the price will fetch a nice, yet moderate home.

Although these are not typical homes by any means, they provide a good point of reference for spending across the country as well as the health of local economies. For reference, we have also included information on the market for homes priced $1 million or greater, with information from Zillow.com.

CNBC.com surveyed 19 local markets across the country, gathering examples and individual perspectives on the health of local markets in America.

So, how far can $1 million go in today's real estate market?

New York, New York

$1 million+ market

• Homes for sale: 3,217
• Median size: 2,459 sq ft
• Median time on market: 68 days

In New York, activity has doubled in the first quarter from a year earlier, with 1,195 sales in Q1 2009 compared to 2,384 in Q1 2010, up due to buyers re-entering the market and sellers getting their asking price. Inventories are down nearly 24%, and with increasing demand. Buyers are optimistic of increasing values over time.

Short sales are also occurring in New York, and this is where buyers are getting the best deals, according to realtors in the area. The current example is a short sale that was originally purchased in January 2008 for $1.45 million.

The outlook is "extremely positive" over the next 12 months, as prices are expected to adjust with high demand and shorter supply.

San Francisco, California

$1 million+ market

• Homes for sale: 597
• Median size: 2,297 sq ft
• Median time on market: 48 days

The San Francisco market has seen an up-tick in buying activity across all price ranges compared to 2009, partly as a result of the federal homebuyer tax credit, which expired in April. The market is seeing a "promising" recovery, although prices and activity are still not back to "normalcy."

Entry-level homes currently represent the hottest segment of the market and this strength is expected to continue into 2011, although buyers continue to demand high affordability. Realtors expect the overall market to remain stable, although summer buying is expected to give a clearer outlook on the rest of the year.

Las Vegas, Nevada

$1 million+ market

• Homes for sale: 130
• Median size: 5,947 sq ft
• Median time on market: 94 days

One of the cities hardest-hit by the subprime crisis, realtors in Las Vegas report only a flat increase in sales from 2009 to 2010, mostly due to the homebuyer tax credit.

Many sales in Las Vegas continue to be short sales, with approximately 80% of homeowners 'underwater', or owe more than their mortgage is worth. Short sales increased from 10% of total sales in January 2009 to 30% of sales in May 2010, and this number could continue to rise.

Supply of homes has dropped from approximately 22,000 in January 2009 to 12,000 in May 2010, with demand dropping at a similar pace. Although there has been a slight increase in prices of late, rising home values are possible in 2011, according to realtors in the area.

Anchorage

$1 million+ market

• Homes for sale: 74
• Median size: 6,379 sq ft
• Median time on market: 128 days

As in the rest of the country, sales in Anchorage were bolstered by the first time home buyer tax credit, but have slowed significantly since the incentive has expired. As a result, first time buyers dominate the market, while short sales and foreclosures continue to increase.

Realtors in the area remain hopeful that the market will remain stable for the rest of the year and steadily increase over the next 12 months.

St. Louis, Missouri

$1 million+ market

• Homes for sale: 33
• Median size: 7,064 sq ft
• Median time on market: 101 days

Realtors in St. Louis report that the city's central corridor has seen strong performance over the past year, up 23% in May from a year earlier. Although the federal homebuyer tax credit increased sales, the opinion is that buyers were simply moving their timetable for purchases forward to take advantage of the program, and that the market will give up some gains.

However, prices look to have stabilized in most price ranges, while residential, non-condo properties are on the market sell 12% faster than they did in 2009.

Phoenix, Arizona

$1 million+ market

• Homes for sale: 342
• Median size: 5,000 sq ft
• Median time on market: 85 days

In one of the harder-hit local markets, Phoenix's $1 million properties offer you much more for the price. In the beginning of 2009, the average price per square foot was around $265, but it has dropped to approximately $229 today. Inventories of million dollar homes has decreased 30% from a year earlier, and analysts say a decrease in overall inventory points towards a stabilized market in the next 12 months.

Buyers in the area are concerned of further market decline and are "extremely price sensitive." However, buyers with the patience to purchase short-sales and foreclosures can gain a great advantage.

Dallas, Texas

$1 million+ market

• Homes for sale: 634
• Median size: 5,361 sq ft
• Median time on market: 93 days

Like many US cities, Dallas has seen an increase in sales and more interested buyers in 2010. One major trend around the city is the purchase of homes that are "move-in ready," instead of homes in need of remodeling. Realtors also report that tougher lending guidelines around jumbo loans have reduced interest in spending additional money to close a purchase with a 20% or greater down payment.

In addition, individuals with "Mean Buyer" syndrome – buyers that have sold and are out to make up for their loss in the buying process – are numerous in Dallas and act to keep prices down.

Despite this, home prices in Dallas are stable and although prices may sink slightly before the end of the year, a surge may be on the horizon by Spring 2011, according to realtors in the area.

Minneapolis, Minnesota

$1 million+ market

• Homes for sale: 141
• Median size: 4,248 sq ft
• Median time on market: 73 days

In Minneapolis, homes in the $1 million range are approximately 3% of the market. At the current levels, it is estimated that the inventory would be bought out after a period of about 33.7 months.

The local market has been one of the best performing in the country in the past 12 months, recently reporting an 11.6% increase in prices over that period.

Omaha, Nebraska

$1 million+ market

• Homes for sale: 21
• Median size: 5,001 sq ft
• Median time on market: 103 days

Although realtors in Omaha report "very strong" sales numbers through 2009, the average sale price of homes sold in this period fell by about 15-20%. In addition, as the federal housing stimulus expired, the amount of completed transactions month-over-month dropped by nearly 65%.

Sales in Omaha mostly originated online, as buyers looked for deals and attempted to quickly close deals prior to the expiration of the home buyer tax credit.

Realtors expect the future to remain stable as long as rates remain very low, although many are bracing for the worst, with perceived unknowns in the job market. New loan restrictions and requirements also stand to potentially hinder activity, the realtors say.

The biggest bummer to arise from the allegations that the revered and feared Wall Street puppet master Goldman Sachs had played us all for patsies is this: the dial on the Wall Street capital-formation machine, the engine that was supposed to be the driving force of the greatest economic system on earth, was purposely set to junk — worthless, synthetic junk.

The civil fraud case the Securities and Exchange Commission filed in mid-April against Goldman is based on a single deal, called Abacus 2007-ac1. The investment bank created it so hedge funder John Paulson could line his pockets with cash when the value of American families' most prized asset crashed. But on Wall Street in the late aughts, polyester financing was in fashion everywhere.  

Morgan Stanley had the so-called dead-Presidents deals, named Buchanan and Jackson. Another Morgan deal, one called Libertas, defrauded investors in the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to a lawsuit. JPMorgan Chase played procurer for Magnetar, a hedge fund so artful in profiting from the meltdown that Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management praised it last year in a case study. A firm run by Lewis Sachs, until recently a top Treasury Department adviser, and UBS, until recently a tax-cheat favorite, created junky bonds that investors who bought them now claim were going bad even before the deals were closed. Bank of America too is being sued for a deal that was set up by its Merrill Lynch subsidiary with a manager who is now under investigation by the SEC.

In the end, it was in fact all one big scam predicated on rising housing prices. Certainly, greedy consumers played a minor role in feeding the frenzy. But the Street made sure that those of us who are not members of its elite club remained the suckers.

Why didn't we find out about these deals sooner? Because they were encapsulated in one of Wall Street's most opaque investment creations ever: synthetic collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs. Synthetic CDOs are derived from mortgage bonds — hence they are derivatives — but they don't actually hold assets, although you can invest in them as you would in the real thing. And you can also short them, as you would a stock, using insurance contracts called credit-default swaps, or CDSs. In the Goldman case, the investment banks and hedge funds that concocted the CDOs allegedly loaded them with the equivalent of toxic bonds and then bought CDSs for themselves, figuring the CDOs would lose value. They did, which left the unsuspecting investors and counterparties who swallowed the CDOs — including supposedly sophisticated banks such as the Netherlands' ABN Amro Bank and Germany's IKB — wondering what happened to their money. 

On the surface, these deals look complicated. They are. But the alleged fraud at the heart of the case against Goldman and its CDO dealings is one of the simplest and oldest forms of deception: lying. According to the SEC, Goldman told one group of investors they were buying a AAA-rated (by lapdog ratings agencies, but that's another story) high-yield investment put together by an independent firm called ACA Management. But the SEC says the person really picking the collateral was Paulson, an investor whose only interest was: Paulson. What Goldman allegedly sold, like any good snake-oil salesman, was a worthless, well-packaged fake.

Only now, in the wake of the SEC suit against Goldman, are investors beginning to suspect they were hoodwinked. According to Thomson Reuters, Wall Street firms underwrote at least $119 billion worth of these deals as the housing market began to crumble, from 2006 until the music stopped. And this number could be low. Many of these deals never get counted, because they are private transactions and not traded on an exchange.

All the firms that set up these deals, and the hedge funds that bet against them, contend they did nothing wrong. A synthetic CDO is at its core a trade, meaning it has a long and short position, and grownup investors are free to take sides. In response to the SEC suit, Goldman says it didn't set up investments to fail and it didn't mislead its clients. It plans to fight the charges aggressively. Some have even argued that these synthetic deals were good for the economy, because they didn't boost lending at a time when the housing market was already overheated. 

The reality is that Wall Street's CDO synthesizer set one of the economy's largest sectors off in the direction of creating nothing but waste — pure economic waste. These CDOs didn't help anyone afford a house. No cars were purchased. No one got a loan to go to college. These CDOs were the last stop in a vast transfer of wealth from a large group of American mortgage holders to a much smaller group of already rich traders who profited as the CDOs failed.

Certainly, the folks who lied to get mortgages, and the banks who helped them, deserve what they get. Still, as most of us worked hard to cobble together a down payment for a house in an ever rising market or put money into our still-damaged-from-the-dotcom-bust investment accounts in order to send our kids to college or retire, we assumed the financial system was working its invisible magic to help make all that possible. In fact, just the opposite was going on. Wall Street was busy chartering buses to nowhere, so our jobs and savings could be driven right out of town.

How the Culture Changed
It is easy to think that Wall Street has always been the place for the corrupt and the greedy and that this is nothing new. But that's not really accurate. Of all the causes of the financial crisis, one of the biggest was a power shift on Wall Street that left the traders in charge and the bankers who had traditionally run everything from Broad Street to Maiden Lane sidelined.

Years ago, the investment world and its professionals believed in long-term relationships. That meant nurturing the economy and the companies and people in it. Two decades of cheap money, though, helped turn the Street over to the traders. That led to a very different way of doing business. "With a trader, the goal of every minute of every day is to make money," says Philipp Meyer, who worked for UBS as a trader in the late 1990s and early 2000s before going on to write about his time there. "So if running the economy off the cliff makes you money, you will do it, and you will do it every day of every week."

The question is, now that we know what we know about what has become of Wall Street, what do we do about it? The SEC case against Goldman shows that the agency plans to do more to combat fraud. That's a big change. Under former commissioner Christopher Cox, Wall Street was basically self-regulating and the SEC hands-off, which helped enable the greatest Ponzi schemer of all time, Bernie Madoff. 

By picking a fight with Goldman — the "great white whale" of Wall Street, as Eliot Spitzer put it on Monday — the SEC is signaling that it has now adopted a feistier approach. "Goldman got picked out because of its stature. When you take on the biggest kid on the block, you are sending a message to everyone on Wall Street that we're not going to back down," says Peter Henning, a former SEC attorney and a professor at Wayne State University Law School. "It's a very aggressive tactic, and in some ways it breaks with past practice."

So, in fact, does the way Goldman is being run. Perhaps the best illustration of the shift on the Street is the career of Goldman's chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein. Back in 1982, when Blankfein, now 55, joined Goldman with a law degree from Harvard and a few years' experience as a tax attorney, the firm was run by two investment bankers, John Whitehead and John Weinberg. Blankfein landed a job in the firm's commodities-trading unit, which Goldman had acquired less than a year before.

Goldman was pretty typical of Wall Street in the 1980s. Investment bankers ran the business and brought in most of the bucks. Salesmen and brokers did pretty well too, buying and selling stocks for clients. Traders, who placed bets with the bank's money, were generally the low men on the totem pole. The one exception was Salomon Brothers, where a band of traders led by Lewis Ranieri — who were raking in money trading Treasury and mortgage bonds — were quickly making Solly the beast on the Street. At Lehman Brothers too, trader Lewis Glucksman forced out investment banker Pete Peterson, who had been running the firm. But a scandal caused Salomon to flame out in the early 1990s. Trading losses at Lehman nearly bankrupted the firm and pushed it into the arms of American Express. Then Long-Term Capital Management nearly brought down the financial system in 1998 when some of its highly leveraged trades collapsed. After an all-hands rescue, the order of Wall Street was restored, temporarily. 

At Goldman, Blankfein was rising rapidly by taking more and more risks in its commodities- and currency-trading businesses. In 1995, shortly after he was named head of the firm's commodities business, he reportedly left a meeting of Goldman partners after complaining the firm was not taking enough risks and immediately bet multimillions of Goldman's capital that the dollar would rise. It did, and Blankfein and Goldman made a bundle.

Yet during the 1990s, trading remained a side business for Wall Street. The cash cow was equities and, in particular, initial public offerings (IPOs), for which bankers were paid a sweet 7% of the deal for little more than ushering new companies into the market and at very little risk. In 1998, the year before Goldman went public, just 28% of its revenue came from trading and principal investments. By 2009, it was 76%.

The big change on Wall Street and at Goldman came with the collapse of the dotcom bubble in early 2000. The underwriting and mergers-advisory businesses on which the investment banks had minted money dried up completely. It would be years before the M&A market came back. IPOs never really did. Where was money being made? In trading. Low interest rates following the early-2000s recession made borrowing cheap. That pushed profits in trading, a capital-intensive business, to take off. Firms began shifting more capital to their trading desks. In the first half of the decade, Goldman's so-called value at risk, which measured how much the firm was risking in the market each day, zoomed from an average of $28 million in 2000 to $70 million in 2005.

Traders, aided by a new generation of Ph.D.-type rocket scientists trained in the complex math of higher finance, began refocusing their firms on the products that would make them the most money. One of the most popular of the new bunch was the CDO. As with everything else on Wall Street, the rise of the CDO had to do with bonus checks. Traders' pay was based not just on how much money they made for the firm but on the size of the bet. Turn in a $10 million gain on AAA Treasurys and you got paid a lot more than if you made the same amount trading lower-rated, much riskier junk bonds. The problem was that making big bucks in the well-established Treasury market was nearly impossible. It's too transparent.

As a trader, what you needed was to take a market in which bonds were thinly traded and magically fill it with more-tradeable highly rated AAA material. By the magic of CDOs you could do just that. CDOs are often created out of the lowest-rated, seldom-traded portions of other bond offerings. And by the mid-2000s most of those bonds were backed by home loans to borrowers with poor credit ratings — toxic waste, in the parlance. Subprime-mortgage bonds went into the CDO blender BBB and came out AAA. All of a sudden, traders were making big money.

With the money came promotions. In 2005, bond salesman John Mack took the reins of Morgan Stanley, promising to boost the firm's profits by allowing its traders to dial up risk. At Lehman Brothers, Dick Fuld, who had climbed that firm's bond-trading ranks, was firmly in place as CEO. And in 2006, when Goldman's CEO, Hank Paulson, a classic investment banker, was tapped by President Bush to be the Treasury Secretary, Blankfein was named as his replacement. The traders had won. "The industry became so heavily weighted toward risk, it just made sense to let the traders run things," says top Wall Street recruiter Gary Goldstein, who heads up the Whitney Group.

Or so it seemed. Traders got Wall Street firms deeper and deeper into more and more complicated products. Complexity, of course, can beget chicanery. Traders were too often in it to make a killing and an exit and cared little about the hazards they might be creating down the road. The term IBG, YBG became popular on the Street. It stands for "I'll be gone, you'll be gone"; someone else will have to clean up the mess. 

Goldman boss Blankfein is an alpha dog in this pack. He hails from Wall Street's roughest neighborhood, the commodities-trading market, which lacks insider-trading rules and many of the other investor protections of other markets. "In the commodities-trading market, when someone is stupid, that's something to be taken advantage of," says Susan Webber, who under the name Yves Smith is the author of ECONned, a book about the financial crisis. "That's the world Blankfein grew up in."

Goldman's Alleged Duplicity
The idea that a 20-something trader with too much power could torpedo the biggest, most profitable firm in finance seems like a plot for a Wall Street parody. But it appears to be exactly what is happening to Goldman, and it is perhaps the logical end of a culture that anointed traders king. In late 2006, Fabrice Tourre, a then 27-year-old Frenchman with an engineering degree from Stanford, got an assignment to help John Paulson place bets against the housing market. 

Tourre, known to refer to himself as the "fabulous Fab," figured out how to structure an investment that was sure to suck the last bit of blood out of the few mortgage investors willing to buy into a market that he believed was due to crater. As Tourre was assembling Paulson's CDO in January 2007, he wrote in an e-mail to a buddy: "The whole building is about to collapse anytime now ... Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab ... standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstruosities [sic] !!!"

What Tourre did understand, according to the SEC, was how to trick investors. The SEC case against Tourre and Goldman hinges on the investment bank's omission of the fact that Paulson was selecting most of the assets for Abacus. Tourre got the CDO manager, ACA Management, to claim in the offering statement that it had picked the assets for Abacus. ACA was getting paid to act as independent manager of the deal. The SEC alleges that while ACA understood that Paulson would have sway over asset selection, Tourre maneuvered ACA into thinking that Paulson planned to invest in Abacus, not bet against it. Paulson was never mentioned in the information sent to Abacus investors and Goldman's counterparties, who ended up losing $1 billion on the deal.

For its part, Goldman vigorously denies the charges, arguing it did not structure the portfolio to lose money — in fact, the firm says it lost more than $90 million through its long position — nor did it misrepresent Paulson's short position. "The SEC's complaint accuses the firm of fraud because it didn't disclose to one party of the transaction who was on the other side of that transaction," Goldman said in a press release. "As normal business practice, market makers do not disclose the identities of a buyer to a seller and vice versa. Goldman Sachs never represented to ACA that Paulson was going to be a long investor."

In a sense, Goldman is relying on the so-called big-boy defense: There are no victims on Wall Street, just fools. "This is no slam dunk for the SEC," says Henning. "We want every transaction to be fair, but these aren't babes in the woods that got taken. These are two banks [that] invested in a very risky area and got very badly burned ... That's how free markets work. You take your chances."

Making the Case for Regulation
The Goldman case may be the opening salvo as a suddenly muscular SEC takes a gander at other Abacus-like deals. Like Goldman, Deutsche Bank struck deals with Paulson, according to the Wall Street Journal, that were structured to bet against the housing market. Magnetar and Tricadia are also in the spotlight, but even if the two hedge funds played their deals to fail, the investment banks that set them up at least disclosed the role of the hedge funds and the fact that they could take a short position.

Beyond any legal issues, the Goldman case has become the battering ram for financial-reform legislation that congressional Democrats have been looking for. Democrats say it underscores the need to reregulate an industry gone wild. Republicans retort that the reforms on the table would have done little to stop the Goldman trade. The latter point is probably right, at least in part. The bill sponsored by Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd would require transactions like Abacus to be traded on an exchange. Such transparency would give the SEC and other regulators more access to monitor these deals and potentially catch material misstatements. The SEC might have noticed earlier the obvious conflicts of interest inherent in the Abacus-like deals. But there still would have been no way for the SEC, without an investigation, to have known that Goldman was omitting any mention of Paulson's involvement.

Nonetheless, the Goldman case does get the Obama Administration back on its best talking points for financial reform: The lack of regulation has morphed Wall Street into a place that regularly trades against our economy. It's our jobs vs. their bonuses on every trade. And if you think Wall Street is going to protect your interests, then I've got a AAA-rated, subprime-mortgage-based CDO to sell you.

Senior staffers at the Securities and Exchange Commission were surfing Internet pornography when they should have been policing the financial system. A deeply disturbing SEC memo to Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) exposing this problem was reported Thursday night by ABC News. Here are some highlights via the Associated Press:

_A senior attorney at the SEC's Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office. He agreed to resign, an earlier watchdog report said.

_An accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a month from visiting websites classified as "Sex" or "Pornography." Yet, he still managed to amass a collection of "very graphic" material on his hard drive by using Google images to bypass the SEC's internal filter, according to an earlier report from the inspector general. The accountant refused to testify in his defense and received a 14-day suspension.

_Seventeen of the employees were "at a senior level," earning salaries of up to $222,418.

_The number of cases jumped from two in 2007 to 16 in 2008. The cracks in the financial system emerged in mid-2007 and spread into full-blown panic by the fall of 2008.

On one hand, two cases in 2007 means that either it wasn't that widespread of a problem or it hadn't yet been detected. On the other hand, the fact that this behavior seems to have been so prevalent among senior level employees is particularly troubling. They're the ones who should have been closely watching the financial industry and leading the way to help prevent the system from collapsing.

A few things should be concluded from this revelation. First, government computers must need better firewalls to block out this content. Second, this is a pretty grim verdict on the effectiveness of regulators. When on the verge of the most major economic crisis in around 80 years, they were watching porn instead of the financial system.

This certainly isn't the kind of publicity the SEC needs as it begins to prosecute its high-profile case against Goldman Sachs. This memo damages the credibility of the regulator. Though, it does begin to explain why it took the SEC more than three years to bring the complaint against Goldman: its employees had other things on their minds.

The folks who print America's money have designed a high-tech version of the $100 bill. It's part of an effort to stay ahead of counterfeiters as technology becomes more sophisticated and more dollars flow overseas, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says.

The makeover was unveiled Wednesday.

Benjamin Franklin is still on the $100 bill, also known as C-note, but he has been joined by a disappearing Liberty Bell in an inkwell and a bright blue security ribbon composed of thousands of tiny lenses that magnify objects in mysterious ways. Move the bill and the objects move in a different direction.

The government hopes the new bills will make it harder for high-tech counterfeiters to replicate.

The new currency will not go into circulation until Feb. 10 of next year, giving the government time to educate the public in the United States and around the world about all the changes.

"We estimate that as many as two-thirds of all $100 notes circulate outside the United States," said Bernanke, who stressed that the 6.5 billion in $100 bills now in circulation will remain legal tender.

The $100 bill, the highest value denomination in general circulation, is the last bill to undergo an extensive redesign. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing began the process in 2003, adding splashes of color to spruce up first the $20 and then the $50, $10 and $5 bills. The $1 bill isn't getting a makeover.

The changes are aimed at thwarting counterfeiters who are armed with ever-more sophisticated computers, scanners and color copiers.

The $100 bill is the most frequent target of counterfeiters operating outside of the United States while the $20 bill is the favorite target of counterfeiters inside the country.

The redesigned $100 bill had originally been expected to go into circulation in late 2008 but its introduction was delayed to give the government time to refine all the new security features.

The government has prepared education resources in 25 languages to inform the public about the design changes.

"We wanted the changes to be very obvious, visible and easy to see," Larry Felix, director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, said.

The new blue security ribbon will give a 3-D effect to the micro-images that the thousands of lenses will be magnifying. Tilt the note back and forth and you will see tiny bells on the ribbon change to 100s as they move.

But that's not all. Tilt the note back and forth and the images will move side to side. Tilt the note side to side and the images will move up and down.

In addition, to the left of Franklin's portrait, will be an inkwell that will change color from copper to green when the note is tilted. The movement will also make a Liberty Bell appear and disappear inside the inkwell.

"As with previous U.S. currency redesigns, this note incorporates the best technology available to ensure we're staying ahead of counterfeiters," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said.

Franklin will remain on the front of the $100 bill and Independence Hall in Philadelphia will remain on the back of the currency although both have been modified in ways aimed at making it harder to produce counterfeit copies of the bills.

"The new security features announced today come after more than a decade of research and development to protect our currency from counterfeiting," said U.S. Treasurer Rosie Rios, whose signature along with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's will appear on the new currency.