2008: "Leading banks and investment funds have been foundering, because of bad debts and lack of trust; and other, less well-known kinds of fiscal chaos are also on the horizon."
Litter on the floor of NYSE as seen from A.I.
The Bank of San Serriffe was founded in 2008 by Donald Knuth, the father of algorithmic design, to solve some remedies in his method . Knuth began writing The Art of Computer Programming in 1968. He will have been lucky to finish it before the end of his life.
Now 85, Knuth is no longer teaching, but remains professor emeritus of the discipline that, in the 1960's, was not properly a "computer science" nor entirely a mathematical pursuit. "Now, instead of rewarding heroic bug-finders with dollars, I shall henceforth award brownie points, otherwise known as hexadecimal dollars (0x$)
> Instead of writing personal checks, I'll write personal certificates of deposit to each awardee's account at the Bank of San Serriffe, which is an offshore institution that has branches in Blefuscu and Elbonia on the planet Pincus. site 
Prior to the 2008 crisis, which Knuth details below from the standpoint of one who spends his time thinking about numbers, and not about money (you can almost hear him yell "kids, get off my lawn!"), Knuth had mailed checks to anyone who could find an error, even a typo, in his magnum opus. From 2006-2008, Knuth claims to have mailed out 276 personal checks. During this time, he ended up having to close his bank account three times due to identity theft: "Forget signatures; banks have no time to verify them. The once venerable system of checking accounts is irretrievably broken. Before long, companies will find it impossible to give out paychecks without exposing themselves to unacceptable risk."
Design: Jill Knuth