The top 75 Iconic DC covers of all-time
posted by Artw on Dec 11, 2009 - 67 comments

Wall Street's Near Death Experience
posted by SeizeTheDay on Oct 6, 2009 - 31 comments

How green was my valley: California's economic meltdown The fields of wheat, cotton and cantaloupe that sustained his family for three generations are gone. The land is a mess of fallow fields, cracked earth and swirling dust. (PDF - By some estimates, 12.8% of the United States' agricultural production (as measured by dollar value) comes from California, and the majority of that is in the Central Valley). However, his particular scene of devastation, Mr. Allen argues, has nothing to do with the credit crisis, the housing crash or the downturn that has California in a vice grip. It has to do with a seven-centimetre-long, semi-translucent, steel blue fish known as the Delta smelt. [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu on Jul 24, 2009 - 76 comments

Recently, John Michael Greer has been exploring a little known idea of the deceased economist E.F. Schumacher (a student of the oft-discussed Keynes). "Schumacher drew a hard distinction between primary goods and secondary goods. The latter of these includes everything dealt with by conventional economics: the goods and services produced by human labor and exchanged among human beings. The former includes all those things necessary for human life and economic activity that are produced not by human beings, but by nature. Schumacher pointed out that primary goods, as the phrase implies, need to come first in any economic analysis because they supply the preconditions for the production of secondary goods. Renewable resources, he proposed, form the equivalent of income in the primary economy, while nonrenewable resources are the equivalent of capital; to insist that an economic system is sound when it is burning through nonrenewable resources at a rate that will lead to rapid depletion is thus as silly as claiming that a business is breaking even if it’s covering up huge losses by drawing down its bank accounts." [more inside]
posted by symbollocks on Jul 10, 2009 - 14 comments

Email patterns can predict impending doom. [more inside]
posted by WPW on Jun 25, 2009 - 18 comments

In a talk titled Definancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation given at The New Emergency Conference, Peak Oil activist and writer Dmitry Orlov (previously 1 2 3) shows how he has come to the conclusion that the oil price spike of summer 2008 was the trigger for the financial collapse that occurred later on in the fall. He goes on to summarize (from his point of view) pretty much everything that has been happening in the past year or so, and what he thinks is coming up next. [more inside]
posted by symbollocks on Jun 19, 2009 - 41 comments

The End of Plenty: Our hot and hungry world could face a perpetual food crisis. From National Geographic Magazine. [more inside]
posted by dgaicun on May 17, 2009 - 36 comments

Welcome to Your Quarterlife Crisis Unrelenting indecision, isolation, confusion and anxiety about working, relationships and direction is reported by people in their mid-twenties to early thirties who are usually urban, middle class and well-educated; those who should be able to capitalize on their youth, unparalleled freedom and free-for-all individuation. They can’t make any decisions, because they don’t know what they want, and they don’t know what they want because they don’t know who they are, and they don’t know who they are because they’re allowed to be anyone they want.
posted by Christ, what an asshole on May 8, 2009 - 109 comments

After the Crisis Once this economic crisis blows over, a lot of companies will need their logos redesigned. Here's a dozen or so.
posted by man vs sun on Mar 24, 2009 - 25 comments

It's scary out there. It can make you just want to hide.
posted by Joe Beese on Mar 19, 2009 - 75 comments

Nationalize. Reorganize. Decentralize. anewwayforward.org wants you to organize a protest on April 11^th to express your frustration and disapproval with how our elected officials have handled the economic crisis.
posted by geos on Mar 17, 2009 - 62 comments

Vizualizations and infographics to help you understand the financial crisis
posted by desjardins on Mar 14, 2009 - 14 comments

Robots ruined the economy. But even robots are affected by bad financial times. Nonetheless, robots help relieve the stress of financial worries. There are worse things than a financial crisis.
posted by twoleftfeet on Mar 14, 2009 - 20 comments

Confused about the banking crisis? Confused by banks in general? This American Life's latest show Bad Bank (streaming, mp3) is a highly informative (and entertaining) overview of how banks work, and what problems they--and we all--face in this current crisis. Produced by another great NPR show, Planet Money.
posted by zardoz on Mar 2, 2009 - 23 comments

Newly jobless and homeless former members of the Japanese upper or upper-middle class are turning to a distinctly 21st century version of the flophouse, the net room: a tiny cubicle, rented by the day, with that all-important feature... an internet connection and a computer. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite on Feb 27, 2009 - 41 comments

Louis C.K. gives us all a little dose of perspective.
posted by Navelgazer on Feb 26, 2009 - 75 comments

Frontline: Inside The Meltdown. Synopsis here. [more inside]
posted by gman on Feb 20, 2009 - 47 comments

As the bankers retreat to their bunkers, a video commentary by an insider.
posted by iffley on Feb 17, 2009 - 11 comments

The Right to Walk Away Has panarchist thinking finally come of age in 2009? With world leaders of big governments failing to find any new solutions to old problems, should we have the right to walk away from those governments?
posted by stuffedspacedog on Feb 2, 2009 - 35 comments

The real estate crisis has started to hit the fantasyland capital of real estate, Dubai. Projects are being abandoned and workers skipping town just the Dubai tower tops out at 818 meters. Pre-vi-ous-ly.
posted by dances_with_sneetches on Jan 20, 2009 - 18 comments

The Dalai Lama blames the financial crisis on a decline in spirituality. Hindus blame it on greed. Saudi Grand Mufti, Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, blames the crisis on ignoring God's rules. Jewish scholars say we could have avoided a crisis by following Talmudic traditions. Pope Benedict sees the global financial system as "self-centred, short-sighted and lacking in concern for the destitute." Is it right to pray for the economy? (a Christian perspective). A Malaysian conference brings together Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Taoists, and Sikhs to discuss the crisis.
posted by desjardins on Jan 14, 2009 - 93 comments

Newsfilter: It's that time of the year again, though now it seems to be more serious. Russia stopped all gas supply to Europe via Ukraine on Wednesday, January 7, 2009. The EU depends on Russia for about a quarter of its total gas supplies, some 80% of which is pumped through Ukraine. At least seventeen countries are affected, many of them severely as Russia is their primary or only source of gas. [more inside]
posted by b. on Jan 7, 2009 - 51 comments

Have we ever been more emotionally volatile, more in thrall to our sensations than now? We had become used to viewing all our neuroses as crises; now a genuine crisis was upon us, it was a cataclysm. Atheist or believer, we have in the last decade been primed for an end-time of sorts, with a stock of latent fears ready and waiting. Suddenly, all of those fears had an outlet.

Tim Adams contemplates the new Age of Anxiety.
posted by Sonny Jim on Jan 4, 2009 - 28 comments

Wonder how your bank is doing these days? Here's how to interpret the data.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies on Dec 31, 2008 - 21 comments

Why Wall Street Always Blows It, and why we're always to blame, as told by banished securities analyst Henry Blodget.
posted by SeizeTheDay on Dec 30, 2008 - 37 comments

Zimbabwe Hiding Cholera Epidemic. Sadly, no one knows what the real death toll numbers are. First hand report from Sarah Jacobs with Save The Children. Morgan Tsvangirai, backed by former President Carter: Zimbabwe is in shambles...deaths from starvation and a cholera outbreak threaten to surge with the rainy season approaching. [more inside]
posted by allkindsoftime on Dec 3, 2008 - 20 comments

Can social networking be used to effect positive social change? Ushahidi (meaning "testimony" in Swahili) is one such project that harnesses mobile technology to empower local citizens to report on crucial and crisis situations in their area. [more inside]
posted by divabat on Nov 28, 2008 - 19 comments

The laughed at him. Foretelling the doom and gloom of the mortgage crisis as a pundit in these 2006-2007 interviews, Peter Schiff held to a grim economic outlook. Recently in the Washington Post, Schiff writes: "Our leaders irrationally promoted home-buying, discouraged savings, and recklessly encouraged borrowing and lending, which together undermined our markets."
posted by thisisdrew on Nov 14, 2008 - 33 comments

200+ Tools for Surviving the Economic Crisis l Free printable Basic Budgeting Worksheet l Building Your First Budget l How To Create a Budget l How to Make a Budget and Stick to It l Frugal Family Recipes. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Oct 20, 2008 - 37 comments

Sad Guys on Trading Floors. (via)
posted by longdaysjourney on Oct 8, 2008 - 54 comments

Icelandic internet bank Icesave has closed its doors. The Icelandic government has told the UK chancellor that it cannot pay back the money of UK depositors. [more inside]
posted by Happy Dave on Oct 8, 2008 - 84 comments

This American Life gives you Another Frightening Show About the Economy.. The guys who brought us The Giant Pool of Money (previously) explain the credit crunch and why it's so scary. And not in the Halloween fun-to-be-scared sense.
posted by justkevin on Oct 5, 2008 - 169 comments

Washington Mutual seized by FDIC, sold to JP Morgan.
posted by empath on Sep 25, 2008 - 209 comments

Fannie and Freddie have now been placed under conservatorship. [more inside]
posted by SeizeTheDay on Sep 5, 2008 - 93 comments

Norfolk & Holmes is no ordinary estate agency. [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin on Aug 22, 2008 - 10 comments

Upclose and personal on the man, Nouriel Roubini, who predicted the subprime crisis. Apparently we're in for a long long haul out of this mess. Oh, and it may be the end of America (reg req'd) as we know it. [more inside]
posted by blahblah on Aug 16, 2008 - 99 comments

Subprime crisis worse than we thought... The Shire, an Oregon housing development based on Tolkien's Hobbit village, is in foreclosure.
posted by jrochest on Aug 4, 2008 - 53 comments

Zimbabwe: Tsvangirai Withdraws MDC From 'Sham' Poll. Apparently he agrees with Mugabe's claim that only God can remove him from office. Prev Zim.
posted by allkindsoftime on Jun 23, 2008 - 65 comments

Fiscal Pressures Lead Some States to Free Inmates Early, says the Washington Post. Across the United States, a financial crisis is brewing in our nation's correctional systems. California, which has the largest prison system in the nation, (housing 170,000 inmates with a capacity of only 100,000), plans to increase the budget for new prison construction by 7 to 14 billion dollars, on top of releasing 22,000 nonviolent prisoners on unsupervised parole. Other states, especially Michigan, face an even more dire situation... [more inside]
posted by Avenger on May 5, 2008 - 41 comments

Superstar Scottish comics writer Grant Morrison is about to tear the DC Universe apart again with Final Crisis, the latest in a series of apocalypses and world ending events he's inflicted on various comics worlds over the years. But there was a time before fame when he wrote the tie-in comic for ZOIDS, the robot dinosaur children's toy. So what did he do? Ushered in the apocalypse, in the form of THE BLACK ZOID.
posted by Artw on Apr 17, 2008 - 74 comments

Flowers are losing their smell. The discovery could be one of several factors in the "colony collapse disorder" that is wiping out honey bees around the world. Even a brief glance at the titles of the news articles on Wiki reads a bit frighteningly, as do the previous mentions here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
posted by allkindsoftime on Apr 17, 2008 - 22 comments

Bacteriophages ("phages" for short) were the only effective treatment against infectious diseases until antibiotics came along during WWII.

Phages are the most ubiquitous organism on Earth. They are naturally occurring viruses that infect bacteria and bacteria only. We live in a sea of phages. Our bodies are more phage than human. There approximately 10 to the 32 power of them around us. That's 10 with 32 zeros behind it.

Antibiotics cannot keep up with evolving infections, while phages naturally co-evolve with the bacteria.

Currently we are in a growing antibiotic crisis and phage therapy is getting a serious look again. Here's a fascinating discussion from National Public Radio.
posted by wsg on Apr 4, 2008 - 37 comments

Holy Shit! What am I going to do without MOZZARELLA!!!!! [more inside]
posted by snsranch on Mar 28, 2008 - 30 comments

Nitroeconomics (if you want to sound more scientific you can call it synthetic economics) is different. It is set in the virtual world of Nitropia, which doesn't exist but easily could.... We can use nitroeconomics to understand real situations in the real world, such as the subprime crisis, with a simple three-step process.... The first cool thing about Nitropia is that it has no financial system at all. Unlike other, inferior virtual economies, it does not distinguish between "money" and other virtual objects. A monetary token in Nitropia is an object like any other - a magic sword, an inflatable penis, or whatever. A player in Nitropia who has a lot of money just owns a lot of these tokens. There is no special, separate "bank balance."

A[n Austrian-school] straightforward explanation of the present financial crisis (part 1) [more inside]
posted by orthogonality on Jan 17, 2008 - 28 comments

Yes, the Subprime Mortgage Crisis was 2007's top national business news story for the second year in a row (and odds on favorite to Threepeat), #2 news story overall (TIME put Pakistan at #1, for AP, it was the Virginia State Massacre). But then I saw that it was the #1 local news story in my town. [more inside]
posted by wendell on Jan 4, 2008 - 14 comments

A graphical, animated explanation of how collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) work, by Felix Salmon, Maryanne Murray, Jeffrey Cane, Jacky Myint, and Shazna Nessa. The collapse in CDO valuations and the resulting losses to investors played a major role in the recent banking crisis. Via Paul Krugman.
posted by russilwvong on Dec 6, 2007 - 42 comments

Two hedge funds that predicted sub-prime crisis see corporate debt as next casualty Two hedge fund firms that racked up huge gains betting on the subprime mortgage meltdown have begun winding down those trades and looking elsewhere. They're now betting against corporate debt using derivatives.
posted by janetplanet on Nov 15, 2007 - 26 comments

Weatherfilter: Widespread flooding in the UK leaves hundreds of thousands of homes without water and power. Extraordinary scenes of the floods command many of the front pages of Monday's newspapers. The Environment Agency has warned water levels are expected to exceed those of the devastating floods of 1947.
posted by chuckdarwin on Jul 23, 2007 - 56 comments

vivoleum ExxonMobil has hit upon a novel and renewable source of fuel "Attendees paid 50 dollars a head to hear a speech from the National Petroleum Council, a group that also advises the White House on oil and gas matters. It was rumoured a new joint energy policy from the Canadian and American governments was coming."
posted by nihlton on Jun 14, 2007 - 27 comments

...A few days ago the chief of the Israeli police resigned after an investigation that found several of Israel’s highest police officers guilty of corruption and negligence. This came within a week of the forced resignation of Israel’s Chief of Staff from the military because of the fiascos of the second Lebanon war... some ten days after Israel’s minister of justice was convicted of sexual assault while on duty... after Israel’s president – who holds a largely symbolic position – resigned temporarily following charges of rape and sexual misconduct. ....several other investigations are still pending, not least two or three directed at the Prime Minister himself, Ehud Olmert, concerning corruption and favoritism... Suddenly the Palestinians and the Hizbullah, and even Iranian nukes, have taken a back seat: Israel does indeed seem in danger of imploding from within, at least as a viable democracy.

Is Israel Falling Apart ?
posted by y2karl on Mar 4, 2007 - 55 comments