According to the AP, “The worst U.S. recession since World War II and the lure of the Internet have combined to make the (newspaper) industry’s annual ad revenue $20 billion less than it was three years ago.” But why read about the decline of newspaper circulation in, say, a newspaper or even on a newspaper’s [...]

This infographic, found on Boing Boing, is one way to starkly illustrate excessive CEO pay. It shows how many minimum wage earners it would take to equal the salaries of the top eight corporate chief executives in 2008. Click on the chart to see it full size.

Ever see Woody Allen’s movie Take the Money and Run, in which his attempt at a bank robbery is thwarted because no one can read the hold-up note?

In real life,of course, crime and the desperation–economic or otherwise–that may impel someone to commit one is no laughing matter. Still, some of the details can be sort of interesting.

To that end: Bank Notes: A Collection of Bank Robbery Notes.

…not this year’s Nobel Prize winner, Elinor Ostrom. Nor is it Christina Romer, chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, or Laura Tyson, who held that position in the Clinton administration. According to the blog Economic Principals, which used Google Scholar to measure citation counts, the winner is Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland, co-author of This Time is Different:Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.

Last week’s positive GDP report got many people talking end of recession. But a glimpse at the economist blogs shows a more nuanced view: From Econbrowser, written by two economics professors: …The government sector made a smaller contribution than one might have thought given the fiscal stimulus, in part because lower state and local spending [...]

It’s unlikely most of these were actually sent. But if the Internet is good for one thing, it’s making public the simmering cauldron of stored-up bile that you used to be able to only drench your friends, family, and pets with. And of course there’s the hope that your former boss might come across your post and recognize his or her self in it.

Most of these are dripping with sarcasm, and some are quite nasty. Which is understandable. Perhaps, in a brutal recession such as this, decorum is the first thing to go.

From Letters to Your Former Employer:

Haiku mania continues. Coming to us over the Facebook transom from Patricia Milton: The cash for clunkers program worked. Shiny new cars in foreclosed driveways.

Whether we’re experiencing another stock bubble now is a matter of opinion. But this post from The Consumerist pointing to the front page of the Wall Street Journal the first time the Dow broke 10,000–in 1999–is a good reminder of the kind of cheering-section sentiment tossed around in the middle of such an asset-inflated period. [...]

Facebook response to our last post on unemployment haikus, from a mother of three small children. i work my ass off but my only salary is dirty laundry

Economist Mark Thoma posted this graph on his blog Economist’s View. Fellow economist Brad DeLong comments: “It’s very scary: long-term unemployment has a way of turning into structural unemployment…”