1) Bitcoin: more than just the currency of digital vice (The Guardian) - Top billing for this Guardian piece because it was easily the most fascinating thing I read this week. I had no idea you could buy recreational drugs online and have them delivered, and pay for it all with BitCoin. Little by little, day by day, governments grow more impotent thanks to the power of the web.

2) Goldman Sachs Is Changing Its Managing Director Selection Process (Business Insider) - Pay attention, gunners. There's less room at the top for the Vampire Squid, so now the annual selection process for new MDs will only happen every two years until further notice. Bummer for those of you who thought you'd get the tap this year.

3) 9 Sweet Ways to Totally #Crush That I-Banking Internship (BroBible) - I-Banking advice from BroBible? You bet your ass, and it's pretty spot on in a vapid, lax bro kinda way. Doesn't hurt to follow this advice.

I was pretty surprised to find the following article in the Wall Street Journal. Kiplinger's Personal Finance? Sure. But the Journal? Wow. It's a pretty dark day for B-schools when the Journal starts publishing stories about how they're a waste of money.

The article goes on to point out that the education you receive in B-school can be found for free on YouTube, and that the real value of B-school is in the network you develop. So is there a more cost effective way to develop your network than throwing $175,000 at a school? The author seems to think so.

The fact is there are very few places outside of banking where someone can earn six figures right out of college. But it appears that Gary Thompson of Lexington, Ky has found one and, based on some of your comments, a few of you might be a natural for this gig. Okay, I'm just kidding about that. But who knew there was this kind of dough in reprising Johnny Knoxville's role in The Ringer as a street performer? This scumbag's pulling in a hundred grand a year with this schtick. So I ask you: is he an innovator, or is there a special place in Hell waiting for him?

Bogus beggar busted

Yesterday's post about the Scientific American article on gaming your comp in trading brought about some pretty thoughtful comments from you guys, and those comments somehow jogged a memory of mine about a scam that was running around the time I got started in the business. Admittedly, this is only tangentially related to yesterday's topic, but I think you'll find it entertaining nonetheless. This scam made a lot of guys in the business rich, and all it took was a fax machine.

So a couple things you have to remember before we get started. This is something that happened in the late 80's and early 90's - basically the Dark Ages for retail investors. There was no Internet, there were no message boards, literally the most reliable and timely information you could find about your stock holdings came each morning in the pages of Investors Business Daily. Sure, you could call your broker and ask him to research a company for you, but unless you were doing monster gross with him that would be the end of the conversation.

Around this time, the fastest most modern piece of technology which was fairly widespread was the fax machine. Nobody really had home computers yet (and those that did exist were not useful for much more than video games and basic accounting), and email hadn't been invented yet. So if you had a fax machine, odds are you were either pretty tech savvy or you were somewhat rich/important, or both.

Who's in the mood for a little thought exercise today? Because I came across this Bloomberg piece that claims Wall Street banks get an $83 billion annual taxpayer subsidy and, when you look at it the way they do, it's hard to disagree. The piece further states that the 10 largest banks in America wouldn't even break even without it, so essentially all the comp from bottom to top is a taxpayer handout.

There are a couple of things you have to accept for this to make sense. First, you must acknowledge that Too Big To Fail is enshrined in our policy now, thereby eliminating the vast majority of risk to bank bondholders. Obviously, with minimal risk comes a decreased borrowing cost (or government subsidy, if you will) which the IMF has pegged at 80 basis points.

When that discount is applied to the total liabilities of the 10 largest American banks, it results in an $83 billion taxpayer subsidy (because the banks' safety net is the implied backstopping by US taxpayers). Put another way, without this subsidy America's top banks would barely break even, and some would even lose money.

I have to admit that I was pretty surprised at the source of the following article. You wouldn't think Scientific American would be aware of the "career put". But here they go pointing out how to make a seven-figure trading bonus on Wall Street with no risk. Hint: it's gonna take an accomplice at a rival firm.

The author of the piece is a former prop trader who spent 20 years on the Street, and he outlines a couple other ingenious schemes for gaming the compensation system. It's no coincidence that he knows about this stuff, either. He interviewed a math PhD in 2000 who eventually went to work at another bank and "milked the franchise". He walked away with almost $20 million in comp while his firm ate $300 million in losses. The subject of his doctoral thesis? Game Theory.

mod (Andy) note: "Blast from the past - Best of Eddie" - This one is originally from February 2011. If there's an old post from Eddie you'd like to see up again shoot me a message.

Could you survive on $1,000 a month? What if you had a kid to care for, too? What corners would you cut to keep food on the table? You can answer these questions and more when you play Spent, a free online poverty simulator from the Urban Ministries of Durham. I managed to make it to the end of the month with $441 to spare, but I had to tell my kid he couldn't play after-school sports, I had to leave the family pet to suffer with a painful condition, and I had to skip my car payment.

I also took an entrepreneurial risk and got screwed for it. I took the job as a warehouseman and, when offered to maintain my hourly wage or get paid on a performance basis, opting for the performance bonus cost me 25% of my monthly income. It's an interesting simulation, and an eye opener for anyone who hasn't had to make poverty-based decisions in life. Spent presents you with decisions you have to make each day of the month, and most of them aren't pretty.

There was other stuff I was going to write about today, but I felt like I had to clue you guys into this story first. Why? Maybe it's just the natural skeptic in me, but I can't see a gravy train like this lasting indefinitely.

Many of us have ideas for a side hustle that has the potential to bring in some nice ancillary income, but we never do anything about it because we're too busy or we don't have the funds to commit to it, or we're just plain old Wantrepreneurs (don't be that guy). Well, thanks to StartGarden, you no longer have an excuse. If your idea is solid enough, they'll give you $5,000 this week just to test it.

All you do is submit your idea on their website, and every week they pick one idea to fund for $5,000 with no strings attached (allegedly - there goes the skeptic in me again). In addition to the $5,000 a week the founders give away, they give away another $5,000 a week on an idea the community thinks is worth it.

mod (Andy) note: "Blast from the past - Best of Eddie" - This one is originally from October 2011. If there's an old post from Eddie you'd like to see up again shoot me a message.

You guys know I love this stuff. It's no secret that you need a college degree to be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. But what if you just want to be filthy rich? College is expensive and may even stifle your creativity. On top of that, PayPal founder Peter Thiel will even pay you $100,000 not to go. Enter Michael Ellsberg, author of The Education of Millionaires, a book about all the people who blew off school and became enormously wealthy. The gist of the book? Work on your soft skills more than anything else. It's something I've said my whole life: The guy who knows why something needs to be done will always make more than the guy who knows how to do it.

I know the average banker can quote the bible of higher education chapter and verse. But there really is a better way for some people, and I'm living proof of that. While I'd prefer balls and brains in equal measure, if I'm forced to choose I'll take balls every time (no homo). Some fantastic networking tips here as well. Enjoy:

My dad would've been 82 today. Happy birthday, Dad. Now let's get to it:

1) Paulson Leads Funds to Bermuda Tax Dodge Aiding Billionaires (Bloomberg) - If you're a hedgie looking for a reason to vacation in Bermuda, now you have one. Send your money on vacation and skip paying all those pesky taxes. Lord knows it's hard enough to keep food on the table if you're only making 2 and 20.

2) The 20 biggest private exits of 2012 (for the top 20 VC firms of the year) (Venture Beat) - Can I get a resounding "BOO-YAH" from my VC homies? I think one of the coolest things about this list is that most people have never heard of the majority of these companies.

3) Former U.S. bailout cop says another crash is inevitable (CNN) - Remember Neil Barofsky? Here's an interesting interview he did with Chritiane Amanpour where he points out that moral hazard is even worse now than it was in 2008, and it's going to have a predictable end.