Posted on 02/28/2025 12:01:51 PM PST by where's_the_Outrage?
Maybe they’re speaking to us in code.
“Bank accidentally credits customer with $81 trillion instead of $280”
That actually happened to me once, except it was a brokerage, and it was on New Years Day. On January 2nd, first thing in the morning, it, alas, was all gone (I checked). I’m not sure being a billionaire for a day felt any different than before or after. Maybe if I was able to spend some of it.
Odd how money was created with a keyboard out of thin air
I had a co-worker get his bank statement back in the 1990’s and his eyes bugged out of his head, he had over $1 million dollars in his bank account, well and above the salary of a psychology instructor and pastor. Our office was on the third floor of this banking institution and he went down stairs to ask them if indeed he was a new millionaire or had they screwed up with a number and decimal like he suspected.
They were highly embarrassed when he showed them the statement and indeed he had a million dollars in his account. They apologized and he was a good sport about the whole thing, getting someone to take his picture and his statement showing that for a brief few days he was a millionaire.
According to Grok if I worded the question correctly the interest earned for 90 minutes at 1% on 80 trillion dollars would be approximately 138 million dollars
3% interest for 1 day would still be 6.6 Billion
That happened to me once. I withdrew $60 from the ATM and my available balance was $363,000, when I knew I had about $300. I saved the receipt, and the next day it was gone. They have algorithms running to catch that stuff. It was a grocery chains account that got fat fingered into my account. Nice while it lasted.
What sort of keyboard mistake could possibly do that? Its not like a bank keys in transactions with exponents.
Those are some really fat fingers there.
$80 trillion dropped into your account for 6 hrs.
0.1% interest annually
260 business days...
0.00038% per day...
6 of 8 hrs...
0.00038% * 6 / 8 == 0.000288% interest in 6 hrs
$80 T * 6 hrs of interest == ...
80,000,000,000,000 * 0.00000288 == $ 230,769,230.77
This is not a mundane detail, MICHAEL!!
The bank is probably run by FJB’s Treasury Secretary.
Might need Musk and DOGE efficiency experts team to help sort things out . . .
Interesting figures, but more likely the financial institutions uses the end of the day balance for interest calculations.
When I was a poor student I went to the bank to make a deposit. The teller looks twice at the monitor and says something like “The big deposit has cleared”. Since I had maybe a few hundred to my name I asked him “What big deposit?” He looks around, leans over the counter and whispers “The million dollar one”. My mind raced considering whether my small deposit should become a large withdrawal. After about 5 seconds of weighing the options and consequences I decided to come clean and tell him I had made no big deposits.
A “fat finger” normally turns $280.00 into $2,800.00.
How many “fat fingers” does it take to turn $280.00 into $81,000,000,000,000?
The clerk probably mistook the customer for “The Big Guy.”
“Here, sir, let me deposit your 10% to your account. Have a nice day.”
Will that fit in the tube they pass through the drive up window?
For a day?
He could probably retire on two SECONDS of accrued interest.
I doubt, seriously, the bank had 8.1x10^12 dollars equivalent at the ready. Someone hacked the bank and did this. No clerk did this, and two people didn’t approve it either.
I had the reverse problem in 1977. I’d been saving about 80% of my paycheck in my field service engineering job because all my living, car, room, and board expenses were covered while I was in the field. I’d socked away $25,000 in just over four years.
I returned to San Francisco, dropped into the Crocker Bank branch and they said “We have no record of your account.” I protested and the idiot branch manager said “Well, you must have bounced a check.”
I wrote to all the bank execs and the bank examiner in Sacramento. Soon thereafter, I was treated like royalty by the branch manager. I really wanted to get his ass fired.
They credited my account with the missing interest but couldn’t do a simple calculation and offered me less than 10% of what was owed me. I wrote out the math for them. The branch manager looked at it and said “He’s right.” and ordered the teller to credit me with what I had calculated.
It was stressful watching over four years of diligent savings go POOF!
It would have been nice to get the interest, even at 1%, for that amount, and even pro-rated for that amount of time.
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