Frunds in the bank?

I received an email today with the subject "RE: FRUNDS IN THE BANK!!"  This has to be spam!  "Re" for a subject I never used in email.  All caps.  Double exclamation marks.  And the sender used the title "Mr."  How many emails do you send with any of these in the header?  Maybe caps once in awhile.  "Re" only generated automatically when you respond to another's message.  Misspellings!  Lot of us make typos that we miss, but "FRUNDS".  Could this be a Freudian slip; the writer meant "FRAUDS IN THE BANK"?

Microsoft Outlook allows me to peek at the text of a message without opening it.  Sure enough, the writer has carefully investigated me and would like me to assist in a money transfer of several millions of dollars.  Gosh!  If he claims to be with a Hong Kong bank, doesn't the bank have the connections and resources to transfer large sums of money without calling on complete strangers, by email no less.

I wonder how long my list of blocked senders has become.  I block at least four a day from all over the world.  I wish I would get a commission from all those vendors of email addresses.  They could easily do it by putting my commission in my PayPal account.  As far as I know, I'm the only Melvyn Magree.

Cash is becoming obsolete, will credit cards follow?

Imagine this! You go into a store to purchase something. When it comes time to pay you whip out, not your credit card but your cell phone. The merchant gives you a number, you call PayPal, enter the amount of the purchase and the number the merchant gave you. A moment later the merchant receives a notice on his or her computer that the payment has been made. The merchant wraps your purchase and thanks you for your business.

Far-fetched? No, it is technologically feasible and has been implemented in many parts of the world, see "Mobile Payments". The above scenario is a four-step process. The purchaser calls his or her financial institution. That company approves the sale and calls the merchant's financial institution transferring the money. That company sends a message to the merchant's computer. The merchant sees the message and completes the sale.

Apple has this down to a three-step process for iTunes and PayPal has it down to a seven-step process. I would guess that Apple trusts most of its iTunes users and eliminates the approval process. See "From Credit Card to PayPal: 3 Ways to Move Money", Wired, February 2010. See also the main article, "The Future of Money: It's Flexible, Frictionless and (Almost) Free".

To think that Congress passed an enormous bill to rein in the reign of the credit card companies. It could have passed a one-page bill to authorize Federal agencies, including the IRS to accept payments through PayPal.

True capitalists should welcome this creative destruction, which really is the basis for innovation, not behemoth near monopolies. For more on creative destruction, see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction