The Boston Globe is running an interactive feature through which Bay Staters can report what the turnout looks like at their particular polling stations.

The Real-World Economics Review blog has nominated the following people for its Ignoble Prize for Economics, which will be awarded to three econoists “who contributed most to enabling the Global Financial Collapse.”

Click on each name to read evidence of their culpability:

* Alan Greenspan
* Andre Zylberberg
* Art Laffer
* Assar Lindbeck
* Ben Bernanke
* Blythe Masters
* Domingo Cavallo
* Edward Prescott
* Eugene Fama
* Finn E. Kydland
* Fischer Black
* George Stigler
* Larry Summers
* Milton Friedman
* Myron Scholes
* Paul Samuelson
* Pierre Cahuc
* Robert Lucas
* Timothy Geithner

That from a post by Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting fair elections in the U.S. The group, which was featured in the HBO documentary “Hacking Democracy,” has exposed voting irregularities in both Democratic and Republican election wins.

Here, she issues a caution about some possible scenarios regarding a premature media call for either Brown or Coakley in today’s Massachussetts special election for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat.

SHINING A BRIGHT LIGHT ON AN UNDEMOCRATIC TACTIC

For 10 years, I’ve been watching a trend to manipulate elections through premature “call” of the race by a media outlet. See below for predictions on what may follow a media call for either candidate in Massachusetts.

The media “call” can be manipulated because the public doesn’t know that projected winners come from a system that is not even a governmental source! In fact, the media “calls” elections based on data from just one media outlet — usually a quiet little division of the Associated Press that occupies a little corner somewhere and answers very few questions. Volunteers call in result reports to the corporation. The reports are often inaccurate (see below for examples). The names of these volunteers are not part of the public record. We will never get the list of names for those who will call in the 351 numbers which will result in “calling the election” for Tuesday’s Massachusetts election.

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Rep. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) answers questions on the economy, jobs, health care, and other topics, asked via the Web today on the “Ask Your Lawmaker“ podcast. Here’s how it works, from the FAQ page.

Because health care is so critical to anyone’s financial planning, we’ve been covering both the debate and the legislative twists and turns since this blog launched. From the town hall tantrums to the tortured negotiations in the House and Senate to the eruptions of potentially deal-breaking issues like abortion — commentators and reporters have devoted barrelfuls of ink and billions of bytes to the permutations leading to passage of Barack Obama’s top priority, a quest that has pre-occupied the country with a level of intensity usually reserved for presidential elections or debates about war.

Yet, despite all the game theory engaged in by thousands of political kibbitzers, professional and amateur alike, not once — not once – until last week did I see anyone mention the possibility that the fate of the entire enterprise rested on today’s Massachussetts special election to fill the seat left open by the death of Ted Kennedy.

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The top 10 plus a full list, from the compensation data company PayScale. Different types of engineering occupy seven of the top 10 slots. Spanish, music, theology, elementary education, and lastly social work are at the bottom. One surprise: Philosophy majors start at higher salaries than those majoring in biology, health sciences, nursing, public relations, and criminal justice, among others.

In response to our post yesterday about long-term housing prices in the U.S., Carlos on Facebook points us to this post from the blog casaCara – Old Houses for Fun and profit, called “The rise & fall & rise & fall of Amsterdam real estate.” The post references a 2006 New York Times Magazine article about the fluctuations in value since 1628 of a single house in the Dutch capital.

* Home prices doubled in five years (1628-1633) as the city boomed on trade with the Far East, and the establishment of the world’s first stock exchange

* 1635-1637. The bottom dropped out of the real-estate market in the wake of ‘Tulip Mania’ (out-of-control speculation on, of all things, tulip bulbs, which were then a great novelty) and the Plague, which killed 14% of the city’s population. Home prices fell 36%.

* Following those twin calamities, the housing market “quickly stabilized; by the early 1640’s, prices had surpassed their previous heights.”

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For the scoop on donating to Haiti earthquake relief, check out yesterday’s EconomyStory.org post. Plus the Network for Good is providing an easy way to give to any one or all of several dozen organizations. Of course, always be cognizant of online scams.

From the research and consulting firm Emergent Technology, a post on small business trends this year:

Economic Trends

1. The Shift to Contingent Workers Turns Employees into Entrepreneurs: Employers large and small are shifting from full-time employees to part-timers, freelancers, outsourced services, partnership arrangements and other forms of contingent workers. They are doing this to save money and increase business flexibility. Despite the economic recovery, 2010 will see the contingent workforce grow as companies continue to limit hiring of full time staff. Many of these contingent workers will create or work for small businesses.

2. Personal Businesses on the Rise:
Enabled by the Internet and low-cost information technology, the number of personal businesses (one employee businesses) has grown twice as fast as the overall economy over the last decade and exceeds 22 million. With the unemployment rate remaining high and traditional employment options limited, 2010 will be another year of strong growth in the number of personal businesses. The growth in personal businesses will also result in an increase in overall small business formation and numbers in 2010.

3. Small Business Lending Returns to Pre-Bubble Levels:
The Great Recession was caused in large part by a decade long credit bubble. The recession ended the bubble and small business borrowing was extremely difficult in 2009. 2010 will see a thawing of credit markets, but the easy credit environment of the last decade will not come back. Instead, lending standards will return to pre-bubble levels and only highly credit worthy small businesses will be able to borrow. Because of this, the availability and use of alternative credit sources – merchant advances, micro-lending, community lending, factoring, etc. – will grow as sub-prime small businesses seek funds.

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