The Massive Money Infographic

via fivecentnickel.com by Nickel on 12/16/11

Awhile back, I ran across an amazing infographic by Randall Munroe, creator of xkcd. I haven’t mentioned it until now, however, because I didn’t really have time to dig into it. But now that I have, I have to say that I’m very impressed.

This infographic (picture in miniature below) is absolutely huge, and it comes with a giant list of sources. In it, Munroe works his way through a series of monetary visualizations at multiple levels. He starts out with dollars, then zooms out to thousands, millions, billions, and trillions.

He tackles both mundane, everyday issues (the cost of a cup of coffee, the annual cost of pet ownership, etc.) and scales up to bigger picture issues, like a comparison of how household net worth values has changed over the past 25 years, a visualization of household income by quintile (and even finer divisons), presidential fundraising, charitable giving, corporate revenue, federal spending, the derivatives markets, and more.

(click image to enlarge)

He even includes interesting tidbits like the cost to buy the world a Coke ($2.24B), the cost to teach the world to sing ($840B), the cost to fund Wikipedia for 100 years ($1.85B), and the total economic output of the human race so far (a little less than $2.4 quadrillion, with roughly 60% of that since 1980).

The entire infographic spans 12,528 x 8352 pixels, so be prepared for some scrolling.

If you take the time to dig through it, please come back and post the most interesting tidbits that you found.

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Despite the Banks having a complaints redressal machinery, Banking Ombudsman and RBI get over 60000 complaints. But it is also true that almost 50% of the complaints are invalid and are beyond the purview of the Banking Ombudsman. Let us put down the baby steps that we need to do if we have a grievance:

1. First lodge a complaint to the Bank concerned in writing. Banks have a specific complaint register and they have meetings where a customer can walk in and register a complaint. Ask for a receipt.

2. Please keep details of the official receiving the complaint.

3. If the Bank does not respond within 30 days, lodge a complaint with the Ombudsman. Complaints pending at other judicial forums will not be entertained by the BO. You don’t need to pay any fee to the Banking Ombudsman.

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5. Online complaints to Banking Ombudsman can be done @ http://www.bankingombudsman.rbi.org.in

6. If you are not happy with the Ombudsman decision, you can appeal to the Customer Services Department, RBI.

There are 15 Banking Ombudsman (BO) Offices situated across the country to spread awareness about the Banking Ombudsman Scheme especially in rural areas. Intensive awareness campaigns are undertaken to ensure greater reach of the Scheme among the members of public.

Banking Ombudsmen participate in various awareness campaigns under Financial Inclusion and Literacy Programme and visit a number of villages in various Districts under respective territorial jurisdiction of the BOs.

Participation in various important fairs and festivals in the State, face to face interaction with members of public at various places at block level, participating in seminars organised by Government of India in association with RBI are some of the other initiatives undertaken by the Officers of BOs