Has the recession left you with a lot of time but not a lot of dough? Or a lot of dough but not a lot of money? There’s help, as always, online.

• Recession Cooking – Try “feel better tea,” which includes ginger, honey, fennel seeds, and–if you really want to fell better and you’re not a vampire–garlic.
• Recession Recipes – from roasted acorn squash to meat loaf
• Eat Dangerously’s Recession Recipes - Lettuce soup? Let us eat!
• Great Depression Recipes – no, not recipes for depression. You know what we mean. “Snow ice cream” under desserts.
• Scratch Everything – one woman’s experience cooking from scratch for 30 days
• How to cook during a recession – tips from Eating out Loud
• Chowhound: Recession Cuisine – The Chowhound community posts opinions, recipes, and other info for getting by.

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ProfessorBainbridge.com is a very interesting law blog where we found this post critical of the Obama administration’s executive pay policy. But what really struck us was the “Interests” section of the About page.

Transmission or receipt of information contained in this web site does not create an attorney-client relationship. No assurance is given that any correspondence, via e-mail or otherwise, between you and the author of this blog resulting from your receipt of information from this web site will be secure or treated as confidential or privileged. The transmission or delivery of any correspondence will not create an attorney-client relationship between you and the author of this blog. Please do not send the author any confidential information. Legal advice must be tailored to the specific circumstances of each situation, so nothing in this blog should be used as a substitute for the advice of qualified legal counsel familiar with your particular situation. The author assumes no responsibility for the accuracy or timeliness of any information contained in this web site. This blog is not intended to serve as an advertisement or solicitation of legal or any other business. In particular, the author does not intend or desire to wishes to solicit through this blog the business of anyone in any state or other jurisdiction where this web site, or the use thereof, may not be in compliance with any law or ethical rule. I am not a practicing lawyer. I cannot and will not represent you or provide legal advice. I also am not a legal referral service. I cannot and will not refer you to legal counsel.

Blogged like a true lawyer!

The Obama administration has announced that seven companies which received government bailout money will need to cut compensation to their highest-paid employees. (The Fed today also announced a pay-review plan designed to cut down on excessive risk-taking. Reaction to that later.)

From the New York Times:

Reactions…

Economics blog Marginal Revolution

There is no way this will work as advertised. If the administration actually follows through, most of these executives will quit and get higher paying jobs elsewhere. Executives not directly affected by the pay cuts will also quit when they see their prospects for future salary gains have been cut. Chaos will be created at these firms as top people leave in droves. Will the administration then order people back to work?

Law blog The Conglomerate

…to my knowledge, there has never been as aggressive an attempt to manage executive compensation. Some observations…

• …you always know that you’re playing to Congress and the cheap seats when you go after perks: “any executive seeking more than $25,000 in special perks — like country club memberships, private planes, limousines or company issued cars — will have to apply to the government for permission.” There’s probably less than $ 5 million at stake for these perks … but that doesn’t mean that it won’t be fun to tell executives that they can’t go play golf.
• Can these executives or firms sue? The government’s TARP decisions are subject to judicial review: so yes, they can…But I cannot imagine a court parsing individual compensation decisions of the government in these sorts of cases…

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A lot of people don’t have money to buy new stuff these days. But unfortunately, lack of resources and lack of need don’t always go hand-in-hand. So whatcha gonna do when something you own doesn’t work the way it used to? Repair it!

And that’s where Repaired Things comes in. The premise is simple: “This blog is a collection of pictures of things that have been repaired.” Gluing, taping, sewing, propping, and even peanut buttering are represented. Here are some repairs we particularly like:

• chair leg
• synthesizer
• wood floor
• irksome tree
• spider web

Then there’s this entry, which gives new meaning to the phrase “applying a band-aid” to the problem.

So put away those maxed-out credit cards and overdrawn checkbooks, get out the scotch tape and Elmer’s Glue, and access your inner handyman. Because one thing that’s probably not going to be repaired so quickly? The economy.

A couple of days ago, a new web site covering the city of Oakland in the San Francisco Bay Area called Oakland Local launched. From the site’s “About” page:

Of course, what we like about the site is the user-gen-related stuff, like this impressive directory of over 200 Oakland blogs. Just some of the interesting sites listed there…

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You may have caught the news item yesterday about a stunt that the satirical group The Yes Men pulled at the National Press Club. Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum posed as a spokesman for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, announcing that the business group had reversed its position opposing climate change legislation and would cease campaigning against it. But in the middle of the faux press conference, an actual official of the Chamber interrupted the proceedings and a mini-melee followed. The jig is most definitely up around 1:05 of the following video of the incident.

Two Americans shared the Nobel Prize for Economics this year: Oliver Williamson and Elinor Ostrom. Ostrom, the first woman to win the economics prize, co-founded the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis with her husband at Indiana University.

One interpretation of the significance of Ostrom’s award is offered by peace studies educator Randall Amster in The Huffington Post. Titled “Why Ostrom’s Nobel is Even More Shocking Than Obama’s,” it reads:

Ostrom’s body of work is inherently radical, demonstrably anti-corporate, and implicitly socialistic. Her basic premise is that the purported “tragedy of the commons” —in which privatization of resources is viewed as the only realistic antidote to their complete exploitation —is actually an inversion of logic and reality, and that in fact the most sustainable forms of resource management are collective, cooperative, egalitarian, and decentralized in nature. Citing empirical case studies from around the world, Ostrom’s work demonstrates how people in localities on every continent have crafted and maintained elegant solutions to what might otherwise become conflict-ridden scenarios involving competition over dwindling essential resources.

In choosing to honor her, the Nobel selection committee has provided an intriguing buttress against the self-referential “only money matters” work of people like Milton Friedman, and has extended its influence into a new generation of economics premised on sustainability and community-based management.

If you want to find out more about—and interact with—the workshop, you can become a fan of its Facebook page. Or you can read one of Ostrom’s research papers, on governing natural resources sustainably in relation to property rights.

And not to ignore the other Nobel winner, Oliver E. Williamson, here’s an interview with him that was part of an ongoing UC Berkeley series of discussions with the school’s economics professors. You’ll need RealPlayer, or something that can play that type of file, to view.

Remember when protesters at this summer’s town hall meetings started chanting “Read the bill! Read the bill!“?

Friends, don’t let this happen to you.

The Senate Finance Committee has now posted its health care bill—all 1,502 pages of it—so that it’s viewable for anyone to see.

A couple of quick observations:

First, unlike a lot of web-based .pdfs, this one seems to be cut-and-pastable. Considering some of the crazy and incorrect information floating around about this legislation, maybe not such a good idea.

Second, this appears near the very beginning of the document:

Read twice? Do they mean out loud? We happen to have obtained a shot of Senator Orrin Hatch, caught around page 650 of the second reading:

For those who prefer a somewhat pithier gateway into the world of health care reform, we return you to a previous post: “Health care reform explained on the back of a napkin.”

Here’s an excellent video slide show from last week’s protest and one-day general strike in San Juan, Puerto Rico in response to the government’s proposed lay-offs of more than 20,000 workers. The unemployment rate in Puerto Rico is 15 percent. Click twice on the video to see it full-size.

And here’s a six-minute video of the event set to Protest the Hero’s “Turn Soonest to the Sea.”

Here are blog posts about the strike from Repeating Islands and Write to Fight.

From the online magazine Slate, earlier this year:

Slate published two slide shows from this group, here and here.

Below are some more photos from the project. Click on each image to see it full-size.