The other day I was sifting through my stumbleupon bookmarks, and I found this incredible article from 2009 about the easiest way to make a billion dollars.

The instructions are actually quite simple:

• STEP 1: Form a bank.
  
• STEP 2: Round up a bunch of unemployed friends to be "bankers."
  
• STEP 3: Raise $1 billion of equity.  (This is the only tricky step. And it's not that tricky.  See full article.)
  
• STEP 4: Borrow $9 billion from the Fed at an annual cost of 0.25%.
  
• STEP 5: Buy $10 billion of 30-year Treasuries paying 4.45%
  
• STEP 6: Sit back and watch the cash flow in.

And you know what? Can't help but think they could just work!

Read the whole article at businessinsider.com.