Here are some of the more interesting facts about gold that we learned from this infographic:

- All the gold in the entire world could fit inside about 3 Olympic sized swimming pools. And unlike paper, it can’t just keep getting printed.

- There are about 5 gold rings worth of gold per person on the earth (~7 billion people = ~35 billion gold rings)

- The vast majority of gold is used as jewelry (as opposed to investments)

- India consumes more than six times as much gold as the US

- China consumes more than three times as much gold as the US

- The US national debt is more than the value of all the gold in the world

From: Number Sleuth

Check out this infographic that details the top 7 cities to find finance jobs, along with a breakdown for what’s in demand and the skills, profiles of local candidates, and percentage change in salaries. Many thanks to Accounting Principals for conducting this study.

click below to expand graphic

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<br /> <a href="http://www.businesspundit.com/the-top-7-cities-to-find-finance-jobs/"><img src="http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Finance-citiesB2.3-012.png" width="400" height="1696" title="The Top 7 Cities to Find Finance Careers"></a><br />Source:<a href="http://www.accountingprincipals.com/Pages/default.aspx">Top Cities For Finance Jobs – Accounting Principles</a><br />

The financial crisis is undeniable in the United States, and other countries around the world have faced their own as well. But who are the people who have contributed to these fiscal problems? The team from the Credit Score Site helps us find out.

Economic bubbles have been around since the birth of currency. Created by a wide range of factors, from excessive monetary liquidity to plain old human greed, exuberance and stupidity, they can be described as a trade in products or assets valued far higher than they should be – which is inevitably followed by a crash in prices.

Seek to uncover the causes behind some of history’s most famous bubbles and you’ll find that many arose out of a pretty bizarre set of circumstances. It seems that these economic events can strike the most unusual of markets at the most unlikely of times. Below we take a look at 10 such examples.

10. Tulip Mania

In 1593, tulips were brought from Turkey to Holland and the Dutch instantly fell in love with this most beguiling of flowers. By the latter months of 1636, certain varieties of tulip were worth more than an Amsterdam house! While demand grew exponentially, supply was initially low, compounded by bulb buyers filling their inventories and the four to seven years it takes tulips to reach flowering size.

The Dutch started trading their homes for tulip bulbs, which increased 20 times in value in a month. But these over-inflated prices could not last long, and within weeks prices fell to one hundredth of this value.

9. South Sea Bubble

The term “bubble” itself originates from the inflated stock prices of the South Sea Company, a British joint stock company granted exclusive rights to trade with South America in 1720, in return for financing the British government’s war debt.

This was a time of lavishness and opulence in Britain, with many wealthy speculators desperate to invest in a company that wildly promised astronomical returns, trading wool and fleece for piles of jewels and gold. Shares in the company quickly reached 10 times their value. But when the bubble burst, many of the country’s elite were left destitute.

8. Rhodium Bubble

Every bit as mysterious as it sounds, the Rhodium Bubble of 2008 saw prices of the rare chemical element increase from $500 per ounce in late 2006 to $9,500 per ounce in July 2008, before falling even more rapidly back to $1,000/oz in January 2009. Nobody’s quite sure what sparked the buying frenzy, but it seems to have been a combination of demand in the American car industry, a bullish market in rare metals and at least one rogue speculator on Wall Street leading on the herd of investors.

7. Railway Mania

Railway Mania, another British phenomenon, grew throughout the early 1840s, peaking in 1846 when a staggering 9,500 miles of new railway lines were authorized, around a third of which were never actually built. As the price of railway shares increased, more money poured in, largely from the new, affluent middle classes that had arisen from the smoke of the industrial revolution.

As few had predicted, it ultimately became clear that building railway lines was not as lucrative and easy as investors had been told by wily entrepreneurs. The collapse was unavoidable, and many middle-class families lost their life savings as a result.

6. Romanian Property Bubble

Romania is said to be the country with the highest house price to income ratio in the world. Spectacularly, the price of an old communist-era apartment rose by 1,000% between 2002 and 2007, leaving apartment prices in Romania’s capital city, Bucharest, rivaling those in Paris or London.

Factors thought to have contributed to the boom include growth in the Romanian banking system, high salaries being earned abroad, a poor supply of properties – and money laundering requirements restricting the activities of corrupt businessmen.

5. Mississippi Bubble

In 1716, John Law established the Banque Générale Privée and a year later the Compagnie d’Occident (or The Mississippi Company), which ended up with a complete monopoly on France’s colonial trade, not to mention responsibilities for collecting French taxes and minting money. The company’s share prices sky-rocketed from 500 to 18,000 livres a share.

The popularity of company shares was so great that they prompted the need for more paper bank notes, which The Mississippi Company was only too happy to print. And when shares generated profits, investors were paid in those very same notes. The bubble finally burst when it became clear that the number of notes being issued was far in excess of the metal coinage the company held. As you might expect, John Law fled France soon afterward, disguised as a woman!

4. Florida Land Boom

In the early 1920s, daring entrepreneurs like Carl G. Fisher went to great lengths to promote Miami as a tropical haven, at one stage erecting an enormous billboard in New York’s Times Square reading, “It’s June in Miami.” Before you could say “Everglades,” developers were pouring into the area, ordering vast amounts of building supplies in the process.

These supplies clogged the rail system, and rail companies soon banned the use of their routes for this purpose. Then in January 1926, a schooner sank blocking Miami harbor, starving the area of building supplies altogether. The 1926 Miami Hurricane was the final nail in the coffin, rendering many local developers bankrupt.

3. Poseidon Bubble

In the 1960s, nickel was in high demand and prices were greater than ever thanks to the Vietnam War, but industrial action against the world’s major supplier, Inco, had led to a supply shortfall. When Australian mining company Poseidon NL discovered a potentially lucrative nickel mining site at Windarra, Western Australia, its share price grew dramatically along with investments in other mining companies and mining in general.

Numerous new and dodgy companies were listed, some of which didn’t even have mining leases. Many investors lost money on them, negative press ensued, and share prices in mining plummeted. By the time Poseidon started producing nickel, nickel prices had dropped too and insufficient profits ensured the company was not able to stay afloat.

2. Dot-com Bubble

The dot-com is one of the most well known bubbles in living memory but also one of the strangest. The bubble grew to bursting point between 1995 and 2001 with investment pouring into thousands of new internet firms, many practicing risky policies of growth over profit (brand building and networking in particular), believing that if they built up their customer bases rapidly enough then profits would surely follow.

Novelty and a difficulty in valuing these companies led to some rather enthusiastic investments. But the growth in the tech sector proved deceptive. Poor business practices led to high profile court cases, and the stock market began to tumble, along with hundreds of dot-coms. The bubble finally burst on March 10, 2000, resulting in a mild but long-felt recession.

1. Uranium Bubble

Of all commodities, what could be stranger than uranium? In the 1970s, uranium hit spot prices of around $110 a pound, but dropped down to below $20 pound in the 1990s, and this is were it stayed… until 2005. A perception of future nuclear energy demand from emerging economies, reactor lifetime extensions in the West and low inventories of uranium led to a swift increase in prices from 2005 to 2007, causing a huge spike in stock prices for uranium mining and exploration companies.

Alas, these prices could not be sustained. A sharp fall post-2007 caused many mining and exploration companies to go bust. But the bubble did leave a lasting legacy: known and inferred uranium reserves increased by 15% in that two year period alone.

Private equity firms Leonard Green & Partners (which is behind Petco, Whole Foods, and Sports Authority, among many others) and TPG Capital (Nieman Marcus, Sabre Group, Midwest Air) have bought out J. Crew for $3 billion. From the Wall St. Journal:

The deal puts the New York company in the hands of private-equity firms TPG Capital and Leonard Green & Partners for $43.50 per share. J. Crew Chief Executive Millard “Mickey” Drexler, a well-known merchant credited with the success of Gap Inc. a decade ago and the more recent turnaround at J. Crew, worked with both firms on the deal. Mr. Drexler will remain with the company.

J. Crew became the darling of Wall Street in the recession as penny-pinching shoppers continued to snap up its embellished cardigans, skinny jeans and cargo pants. The brand has several high-profile fans, including First Lady Michelle Obama.

In a convoluted story, CEO Drexler had to be sued by shareholders for this deal to move ahead. The New York Times has more about the “no-shop” drama behind the J. Crew deal.

Ventas Inc., the nation’s biggest owner of senior housing, bought Nationwide Health Properties, a real estate investment trust specializing in senior housing and long-term care facilities, for $5.8 billion today. Ventas already owns 55,000 senior beds and housing units in 44 states and Canada. Bloomberg has more:

The deal will form the largest health-care REIT in the U.S., according to the statement. Property deals are rising in the industry as real estate values recover. HCP Inc., currently the biggest U.S. health-care REIT by market value, agreed in December to buy 338 properties from Carlyle Group’s HCR ManorCare Inc. for $6.1 billion.

Health care is the single-largest industry in the U.S. based on contribution to gross domestic product, HCP said on its website. The industry will account for about 20 percent of the economy by 2019, Ventas said in a January presentation.

By leasing their properties to health care operators, Ventas is positioned to cash in big time on retiring baby boomers. It is now the biggest health care REIT in the United States. And with average prices per (nursing home) bed hovering around record highs, senior care REITs are looking promising as an everyday investment, too.

Deutsche Boerse and the New York Stock Exchange have merged, creating the biggest stock exchange in the world. Reuters has more about the $10 billion deal:

The new company, which has yet to be named and will be incorporated in Amsterdam, will be headed by NYSE Chief Executive Duncan Niederauer, with Deutsche Boerse Chief Executive Reto Francioni taking the post of chairman, the companies said.

Each NYSE Euronext share will be converted into 0.47 of a share in the new holding company. Deutsche Boerse shares will be converted into one share each of the new company. The deal is expected to yield synergies of 300 million euros ($405.2 million), the companies said.

The New York Times writes that the deal has spurred worries about New York’s status as a global financial capital:

The union of the operators of the New York Stock Exchange and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange marks the biggest instance of consolidation among exchanges, as established players contend with smaller electronic markets that have seized market share.

Last week, the London and Toronto stock exchanges announced their own merger, and in October SGX, the operator of the Singapore stock exchange, said it plans to buy the Australian Stock Exchange.

Leaders in both companies haven’t agreed to a new name, although at least one US politician wants the name to contain the words “New York,” according to the NYT.

In an economic context, however, consolidation makes perfect sense, writes The Wall St Journal’s James B. Stewart:

…when I first invested in the New York Stock Exchange, I considered it and fellow exchanges to be near-monopolies, able to deliver high profit margins to their owners. But technology and the rise of rivals like the IntercontinentalExchange have demonstrated that geography is irrelevant. Face-to-face market making is a historic relic, one that makes a nice photo opportunity on the trading floors in New York and Chicago, but one that has almost entirely been supplanted by computers. Exchange trading already is evolving into a competitive, low-margin business where low costs and large scale will determine the survivors.

No wonder the world’s exchanges are rapidly consolidating.

As part of a continuing crackdown, federal prosecutors are charging four hedge fund employees–three portfolio managers and an analyst–with insider trading. Former SAC Capital Advisors portfolio managers Noah Freeman and Donald Longueuil are being charged, as well as Barai Capital’s Samir Barai. FINAlternatives has more:

According to the complaint against him, Freeman “obtained material non-public information from certain co-conspirators who worked at publicly traded companies or hedge funds, for the purpose of extracting profitable trades on the basis of the inside-information.”

According to that indictment, Barai “communicated directly” with Jiau, conversations which Pflaum frequently listened to. The hedge fund allegedly earned some $820,000 trading on confidential information. Barai Capital, which managed less than $100 million, is liquidating, one of its seeders, Protégé Partners, told investors last month.

This is the latest development in a widespread probe that has so far implicated an ex-Intel executive, an ex-IBM executive, a former Flextronics manager, a McKinsey director, a Morgan Stanley director, and America’s 236th richest man, former Galleon Group hedge fund tycoon Raj Rajaratnam. Lucrative trades included Flextronics, Omnivision, and Apple stock. Head count so far: 35 individuals; 22 have pleaded guilty.

A hedge fund has created a trading model that lets investors gauge the stock market’s mode via Twitter. Bloomberg has the story:

The Derwent Absolute Return Fund Ltd., set to start trading in February with an initial 25 million pounds ($39 million) under management, will follow posts on the social-networking website. A trading model will highlight when the number of times words on Twitter such as “calm” rise above or below average.

A paper by the University of Manchester and Indiana University published in October said the number of emotional words on Twitter could be used to predict daily moves in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. A change in emotions expressed online would be followed between two and six days later by a move in the index, the researchers said, and this information let them predict its movements with 87.6 percent accuracy.

Impressive. I bet other funds will follow suite.

‘Tis the season for year-in-review stories. Here’s our contribution to your reading and viewing lists: a look at the funniest moments in business and finance.

10. Tim Geithner Still Can’t Sell His House

Call this one a running joke, held over from the summer of 2009. That was when we witnessed one of the best, if not the best, takes on the housing market — and a pretty spectacular takedown of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner — courtesy of Jon Stewart and his merry band of Daily Show writers.

It seems that Lil’ Timmy was having a bit of trouble selling his Larchmont, NY home after moving to Washington—all the while, reassuring anxious Americans that they had no reason to worry.

Geithner and his wife, Carole Sonnenfeld Geithner, paid $1.602 million for the house in 2004. When he left for D.C., he put the five-bedroom Tudor on the market for $1.635 million. After it failed to sell, the price was dropped to $1.575 million. Still no takers. So the Geithners rented the place out for the princely sum of $7,500 a month—which likely didn’t cover the monthly payments on the two mortgages totaling $1.25 million, plus yearly property taxes of $27,000.

This year, the housing crisis actually worsened, with foreclosure scandals, fraud, robo-signing, and so forth making precipitously declining home values look positively quaint by comparison.

According to real estate website Zillow.com, the Geithner manse is still on the market, the last sale being recorded in 2004—the year Mr. and Mrs. G purchased it. Geithner must be getting desperate, too—the price has dropped again, to $1.339 million. And still no takers.

9. The Tea Party Gets Speling Rong

To the rest of us, members of the Tea Party are a bit like Scientologists. We can understand how they’ve derived their way of thinking, but even casual familiarity with the inherent concepts tells us it’s absolute nonsense and deception — not a path we’re ever likely to follow. Don’t get me wrong, there are kooks and simpletons on our side, too. However, you gotta admit, the Tea Party is teeming with them.

And no better way to illustrate that is the vast variety of signs with atrocious spelling and grammar. If they’re not calling Obama a “lier,” then they’re calling for English to be America’s “offical” language. And they’re dead set against a return to “Socilism” and “1930′s Gemany.”

Of course, in some ways, they’re right. The “Constution” is very important. “Are” country does deserve respect. And “your” not the only ones outraged.

But until you can produce that third grade diploma, Fox News would probably appreciate it if you didn’t credit the network for keeping you “infromed.”

8. Apple Employee Forgets iPhone at Bar

The stern and grumpy Apple chief suffered a rough couple of scrapes this year.

Despite the explosive debut of the Apple iPad, Jobs still needed to combat this growing epidemic known as Android with a flashy, dynamic update to Apple’s flagship iPhone. Unfortunately, his high-profile launch was undercut because an employee couldn’t hold his alcohol in a Redwood City beer garden. An iPhone 4 prototype was left behind at the bar and it eventually fell into the hands of Gizmodo’s Jason Chen — who pored through its features two months before its official debut.

The device was launched last June and sold like hotcakes nevertheless, but Jobs’ mood was visibly different regarding the iPhone 4. Complaints about the device’s “Death Grip” prompted him to reply, “You’re holding it wrong.” And a testy email conversation with a Gawker employee ended with the CEO firing back, “By the way, what have you done that’s so great?”

Reducing a billionaire to childlike taunts was, is, and forever will be hilarious.

7. Taiwan CGI Studio Covers Wall Street

When Jimmy Lai, described by some as “the Rupert Murdoch of Hong Kong”, launched CGI house Next Media Animation with a surreal re-enactment of the Tiger Woods Escalade-Angry Wife-Shattered Window-Late Night Crash fiasco, he must have known how big his big idea was. “There’s no better sensation than image. It’s so in-your-face!” he told Wired magazine. “This is like watching a videogame, but it’s the news!”

For the relative bargain price of $4,000 a minute, NMA recreates the news of the world in its unique style—like this one titled “Wall Street Gorges on Record Bonuses.”

While the subject matter doesn’t often lend itself to humor, it’s hard not to crack a smile.

“There’s a ghost in their machine,” says Matt Harrigan, a producer at Adult Swim. “They have limitations that force unusual decisions and interpretations. What we get back is usually different from what we expect. Sometimes it’s really funny.”

Just one question: does the Uncle Sam in the above video not look eerily similar to Allman Brothers guitarist Warren Haynes?

6. Clarke and Dawe Explain The European Debt Crisis

The European Debt crisis is the subject of much coverage and debate right now, with Portugal, Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy, and even Belgium being reluctantly forced by bondholders to line up outside the headmaster’s office of the IMF; each desperately trying to avoid getting to the front of the line. They all owe money to each other, at the same time as they’re meant to be bailing each other out.

Australian satirists John Clarke and Bryan Dawe tackled this subject in their inimitable way, ruthlessly shedding light on the follies of Europe’s interlinked (and inter-debted) economies last summer. This skit ran on Australian TV last May but quickly went viral once it appeared on YouTube in June.

Wanna read more? Numbers 1-5 are here.