Cashzilla

Legendary action-movie star turned politician Arnold Schwarzenegger has made a visit to 10 Downing Street, where he spoke with Prime Minister David Cameron about a range of subjects, including their respective efforts to tackle deficits. The governor of California and Mr Cameron then posed for photos, where the PM joked (I assume), that Schwarzenegger was [...]

At odds which are well, probably pretty long, Israel’s latest lottery draw has produced the exact same numbers as it did three weeks ago. Israeli viewers were left shocked when the six numbers – 36, 33, 32, 26, 14, 13 – came out on live television, in the exact same order that they had three [...]

Hans-Rudolf Merz – Switzerland’s finance minister to the uninitiated – has managed to become an internet hit after footage of him cracking up with laughter during a parliamentary speech on spiced meat imports gained over 300,000 views on YouTube. The 67-year-old, who had never received much international acclaim prior to the speech, was so tickled [...]

Interesting news stalwart Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing is to be thanked for bringing this to our attention. Visa have recorded a $23,148,855,308,184,500.00 charge on a prepaid card.

The Consumerist, who broke the story, point out that’s 2,000 times larger than America’s national debt of $11 trillion and that the ever-vigilant billing team at Visa remembered to add the $20 charge for being in the red. Yes; the card was also suspended.

Prepaid cards are an interesting idea. They work in a very similar way to credit or debit cards except you can only spend the balance that has been assigned to the card. In theory this means it is impossible to run in to debt (as there’s no overdraft option) and therefore ideal for giving to teenagers.