The Greek and European debt crisis has thrown a spotlight on the credit ratings of entire nations. From the blog Credit Writedowns, here’s a list of all S&P sovereign credit ratings, from AAA to junk. These ratings will in large part determine the rate of interest countries pay to investors who loan them money via [...]

The Pew Research Center has an online news IQ quiz consisting of 12 questions. I got one wrong, and another one right only because I just read it today.

MIT economist Simon Johnson writes on the blog The Baseline Scenario that the European debt downgrades of the last two days constitute a genuine crisis: Wake the President Most days we can coast along, confident that tomorrow will be much like yesterday. On a very few days we need to look hard at the news [...]

5. Bush tax cuts vs. Obama health care – chart showing the relative impact on the budget of the two Bush tax cuts vs. the Obama health care plan (Mar 4, 2010) Original post: From a recent post titled “What Are These Three Numbers” on the economics blog Econbrowser comes this chart: “The first bar [...]

6. Who are the worst tippers? – another round of waiters commenting on which groups of people they think are the most penurious when it comes to tipping (Dec 8, 2009) Original post: The recession has fewer people eating out, which means less in tips for waiters and waitresses. This can only accentuate the hard [...]

Ever check out Intrade? It’s an online futures market, currently made up of 102,000 members, where you can bet on the outcome of a particular occurrence, giving or taking the odds that the market itself has set. People who subscribe to the “wisdom of crowds” theory often check the site to see what the “market” [...]

The blog ends, but the podcast continues! For a short while, anyway. Thanks Jon, for doing such an awesome job. I love this (most likely, apocryphal) story: So, Henry Ford one day was taking Walter Reuther, the United Auto Workers president, on a tour of a newly automated Ford plant that had replaced many of [...]

7. The H&M incident – After a student notices that retailer H&M is dumping unsold garments, a p.r. nightmare for the company unfolds on the web. (Jan 8, 2010) Original post: “The phone no longer just rings off the hook at the corporate public relations office. Now the Internet lights up too with thousands of [...]

Pretend Office – Freelancers write pretend email messages about pretend office matters. (Apr 12, 2010) Original post: If you’ve been unemployed a long time, perhaps you miss the kind of electronic back-and-forth that goes on in an office. If so, check out Pretend Office. Here’s a description: A few times over the past couple of [...]

9. Best of Craigslist: Economy version – Craigslist-user nominations of posts that are particularly interesting and humorous also serve as indicators of the rotten economy. (Oct 7, 2009) Our original post: Ever check out the Best of Craigslist? These are posts that the site’s users have nominated as particularly interesting and/or humorous. They also can [...]