Bright Idea$?

• Following the release of Apple's yearly financials in October (and based on sales of its iPhone 6), the company announced that, apart from other assets, it was sitting on $206 billion in cash -- about like owning the entire gross domestic product of Venezuela, but all in cash. Another way of expressing it: Using only its cash, Apple could buy every single NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL team, plus the 20 most valuable international soccer teams -- and still have plenty left. Or, as the BGR.com blog also pointed out, it could instead simply give every man, woman and child in America $646 (coincidentally, about what a new iPhone 6 sells for). [BGR.com, 11-3-2015]

• Even if Armageddon doesn't happen, the CEO of the massive online retailer Overstock.com believes there is a "10 to 20 percent" chance of a world financial meltdown in the next few years, and he is arranging to be back in business in the aftermath. Patrick Byrnes told the New York Post in November he has stashed away enough food in a well-fortified facility in Utah's Granite Mountain to serve his 2,000 employees for "30 to 60 days," along with several thousand other emergency preparations and $10 million in gold. But, he insisted, he's not a gun-toting "prepper"; the plan is only about tiding employees over until the Internet and banking systems are back up and running. [New York Post, 11-15-2015]

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