Registered Rep. Readers Do It By The Numbers

Smart decisions are based on more than government statistics, agency reports, news releases, interest rates and stock quotes. We've selected a few fascinating statistics here that illuminate the markets, the world of financial services, and big business.

1. Percent of AAA-rated subprime-mortgage-backed securities issued in 2006 that have been downgraded to junk status: 93

2. Average number of whistleblower complaints received by the IRS per year between 2004 and 2008: 81

3. Number that claimed fraud of more than $100 million: 0

4. Number of complaints in 2009 claiming fraud of $100 million or more: 60

5. Return on $330 invested in the S&P 500 in 1960, without fees, and with reinvested dividends: $35,000

6. Return on that same $330 when invested in the musical “The Fantasticks,” which ran for 27,612 performances, with royalties reinvested in T-bills: $422,000

7. Value of Priceline pitchman William Shatner's shares in the international travel site: $582 million

8. Price that Bloomberg paid to acquire BusinessWeek magazine expressed as a percentage of Bloomberg's $6.3 billion in revenue: 0.079

9. Projected reduction in total nationwide driving if insurance companies were to price automobile insurance by the mile: -8 percent

10. Combined budget shortfalls of 38 states for fiscal 2011: $89 billion

11. Number of states considering legalizing and taxing marijuana as a way to ease budget shortfalls: 13

12. Rank of Facebook, if it were a nation, among the most populous on earth: 3

13. Discount payment that one investor will pay upfront for a $4 million claim against Bernie Madoff in exchange for 100 percent of the claim: $800,000

14. Factor by which the state with the highest per-pack cigarette tax (Rhode Island, $3.46 per pack) exceeded the state with the lowest (Missouri, $0.17): 20

15. Total value of the 10,149 U.S. companies acquired since 2001 by foreign interests: $1.48 trillion

16. Price, per night, of the Ty Warner Penthouse at the Four Seasons Hotel in NYC, including butler and Rolls-Royce with driver: $35,000

17. Number of worker suicides so far in 2010 at Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the world's largest contract manufacturer and a major supplier to Apple: 10

18. Change in paint sales attributed to collapse of housing market from 2007 to 2009: -12 percent

19. Of interior paint sales, the difference attributed to “cocooning”: -3 percent

20. Additional “height bias” salary paid to men in the U.S. per year, per inch of additional height: $789

21. Change in the average pay ($9.95 million) of CEOs in from 2008-2009: -4.7 percent

22. Factor by which the salary of the highest paid CEO in the U.S. (Leslie Moonves of CBS) exceeds that of the lowest paid CEO (Vikram Pandit, Citigroup): 335

23. Rank of the U.S. on an index which measures the perceived level of public-sector corruption in 180 countries and territories around the world (New Zealand ranked # 180, least corrupt; Somalia, #1, the most): 17

24. Economic value, over a lifetime, of each IQ point a child loses because of exposure to lead paint: $8,346

25. Estimated value of the benefit of preventing the extinction of the human race: $600 trillion

26. Number of people in the wealthy northern suburbs of Athens, Greece, who checked the box on their tax returns admitting that they had a swimming pool: 324

27. Number of homes revealed by satellite imagery to have swimming pools: 16,974

28. Median income of Cadillac, Lexus, and Audi owners, respectively: $129,656, $141,745, $183,601

29. The percentage of prime, fixed-rate loans in foreclosure or delinquent in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2010, a record high: 10.73

30. Percent of South Africa's economy that the $12.5 billion impact of the World Cup will contribute to the country's GDP in 2010: 20

Sources: 1 New York Times; 2-4 Internal Revenue Service, 5-6 New York Times; 7 Toronto Sun; 8 Bloomberg; 9 Brookings Institution; 10-11 National Conference of State Legislatures; 12 Facebook; 13 Wall Street Journal; 14 Centers for Disease Control; 15 Dealogic; 16-17 Wall Street Journal; 18-19 Mintel; 20 New York Times; 21-22 Graef Crystal, Bloomberg; 23 Transparency International; 24 EPA; 25 Richard Posner (Catastrophe: Risk and Response); 26-27 New York Times; 28 J.D. Power Auto Offline Media Report; 29 Mortgage Bankers Association; 30 Fortune.