What is "the Swedish Model"? That's temporary nationalization of failed banks. See, you seize control of them, clean up the balance sheets, and auction them off. In other words, it's socialism. It's also really the only remaining option, as the current "throw money at them and watch them hoard it because they don't want to reveal that they're insolvent" model just created some zombie banks, like in Japan, and we'd much rather become Sweden than Japan. (Though the food is better in Japan, of course.)

It's a terrifying prospect, this "Swedish model," or at least Mr. Drudge certainly hopes it sounds scary, to claim our great empire will become a lowly Scandinavian constitutional monarchy, ranked number one on The Economist's Democracy Index. Well, either he's hoping to scare us with the prospect of boring Nordic democratic socialism or he's just using the term "Swedish model" to further the old Republican talking point that all the bailout money is going to porn.

What Drudge neglects to mention in his scary headline: Alan Greenspan also moved toward Sweden's sexy, sexy model.

All hail King Gustav! God natt, American Dream!

Jaffe's been subpoenaed—"investigators want to determine how much Jaffe knew of Madoff’s investment practices and whether he recklessly steered his clients to the alleged swindler."

What would Louis Boston, then, suggest wearing to the hearing? We'd suggest a tweed jacket and colorful neckery. It's always better to draw attention to the face—unless, of course, you're lying. In that case, go with snappy leather wingtips.

[Photo: New York Social Diary]

In August, economist Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, wrote about the "yoked dog" syndrome. In an experiment PETA surely disapproved of, two dogs received a series of mild shocks. One had a switch which turned off the shocks, and rapidly learned to use it. The other had no switch, though the other dog's switch turned off its shocks, too. At the end of the experiment, the second dog ended up whimpering in a corner.

In case you haven't figured it out, we are the yoked dog. Ariely warned that it would take just one more shock to send us over the edge. Instead, we've had a series of them — the disappearance of Wall Street, the reduction of Detroit's automakers to beggars, the largest job loss in decades.

And we've experienced these shocks not as complex stories, but as 140-character Twitter messages, emails, IMs, and Facebook status updates. The entrepreneurs behind Facebook, Digg, and Twitter have always styled their websites as the future of news, filtered by friends rather than editors. The result is that we have been constantly shocking ourselves. No one thinks to hit the "off" switch, even if we could find it.

Zuckerberg, more than anyone, has set his sights on having us share the entirety of our lives online. In a recent GQ profile, he wondered out loud about whether his site could capture our emotions in real time.

Is that really a good thing, to broadcast every passing mood to every casual acquaintance we connect with online? Behavioral economists like Ariely, who study the interplay of psychology with our economic decisions, have found that human beings are more motivated by fear of loss than hope of gain. And our biochemical evolution has set us up for fight-or-flight reactions to every flicker of shadow that crosses the savannah.

One can see how a real-time, computerized reporting system on other people's feelings can be helpful to, say, sufferers of Asperger's Syndrome, the autism-like condition that limits the ability to understand and react appropriately to emotion. But for the vast majority of us, who react like the yoked dog, the endless stream of data about just how bad things have gotten amounts to death by a thousand shocks.

Here's how Zuckerberg could do his part to save the world: An algorithm already rules what information shows up on our Facebook news feeds. By tweaking that to ban bad news and play up anything cheery, Zuckerberg could help us fight our urge to whimper in the corner. Otherwise, he's just leaving the world to go to the dogs.

Except it won't, really. Because Apple CEO Steve Jobs, unlike Franzen, occasionally acts like a grownup — and always acts like a businessman.

Walmart is planning to start selling two iPhone models around Christmas, according to store employees interviewed by Bloomberg. This is surely the end of the iPhone's upscale brand image, argues scary-smart economist Stephen Dubner in his Freakonomics blog.

There are two problems with that. One, Dubner bases his argument on the rumor that Walmart will sell iPhones for $99, less than half the cheapest price they go for today. Yes, dumping the iPhone at a cheap price will piss off customers who spent a hundred dollars extra at an Apple Store.

But it's not going to happen. Apple is notoriously controlling about prices. And there's no way Jobs is going to put his pricey retail palaces at a disadvantage. Sure, Wal-Mart demands discounts when it can play one supplier against another. But Apple, not Wal-Mart has the advantage here. In the past, when Wal-Mart started selling iPods, it didn't get any special discounts. Bloomberg asked a Walmart employee how much the iPhones would cost. The answer: $199 to $299, just like they do today.

Lots of analysts believe that Apple will eventually sell iPhones for $99. Hardware gets cheaper over time, and AT&T actually pays most of the bill, hoping to make up the subsidy with wireless subscriptions. So sure, Apple might drop the price — but it will drop the price everywhere at once rather than cut Wal-Mart a special deal.

But the Walmart-will-ruin-everything line is a great theory, and one that plays especially well in places like San Francisco and Manhattan, which have many Apple Stores but no Walmarts, and dislike Oprah as much as they love their iPhones. Points to Dubner for combining so many cultural touchstones in a single post. Wish we'd thought of it first!

(Photos via nayrb7 and ILoveMyPiccolo via Freakonomics)

Congressional Democrats are now banned from saying "stimulus," because it's a dumb Washington term no one likes, and because, as we all know, if they don't call it that it isn't that. Perception equals reality! (That was true of our entire financial system for many years, btw.)

Rahm Emanuel seems to have sent the memo out, and people are still adjusting. Nancy Pelosi almost said stimulus the other day! But then she caught herself: "We're not using the word 'stimulus,'" Nancy said at a press conference.

Of course, Democrats do have a legitimate excuse for giving their economic policies a new label: their economic policies are actually different!

Yet Democrats say the program will go far beyond a simple stimulus to a comprehensive approach that mixes tax policy, road and bridge building, alternative-energy projects and technological improvements that will have far-reaching consequences. It should not be equated, they say, with a program that provides eligible taxpayers with a check to cover a quick trip to the electronics store.

By the time Obama actually takes office, of course, his plans will be referred to as "Natural Economic Enhancement."

We haven't had a good, hopeful, vague name for a vast array of far-reaching policies lately, have we? A "New Deal" or a "Great Society" would really be useful right now, for historical framing purposes. This one should be called Project: Unicorn.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=6242240&page=1

The guys I play hockey with, a number of whom are bankers, know about the crisis. ‘We could start farming,’ one of them suggested a while ago as we sat in the locker room after another loss to our rivals.

‘I have a balcony. We can raise a goat.’

‘Or mushrooms. We could grow psychedelic mushrooms.’

‘No, the FSB controls that market. The minute you came out with your mushrooms they’d be visiting you.’

‘Gentlemen!’ Our captain wanted us to get back to business. ‘There is a financial crisis. But we are also in a hockey crisis.’

‘We’re better off with a goat,’ the first banker continued. ‘It will give you milk – and progeny!’

Anyway that's pretty much the most interesting part, although we have to say that the rest is a good way of understanding how the global panicmeltdown is affecting Russia. Damn, never thought a Gessen item would end up filed under "things we actually like"!

"Jacob Bimblich, a New York City hypnotist, knew that when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted this fall, his business would go up. He first noticed the increase in financially fretful clients after a couple of laid-off workers from Bear, Stearns & Co., which collapsed in March and was acquired by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., saw him this spring. Soon came a stream of clients from Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Washington Mutual Inc. and other Wall Street firms caught up in the credit crunch." [From the WSJ]

Yeah, so that's what Wall Streeters do—but have you ever wondered what trustafarian Satanists do when they lose a metric ton of cash in the stock market? From the New York Press:

Both of these Satanists are grappling with rapidly diminishing trust funds... I want to know if there are any rituals they can do to get their money back. “Well, they can start with taking some business classes..." After I press him a little harder, he admits, “There is something that involves Mercury, the trickster god, who’s been associated with Satan.” He pauses to pay a toll, and then continues: “But it should have been done last year. Now we’re fucked.”

And Wired says psychics are experiencing an upturn:

Katrina Spears, a self-described internet medium, was running errands Sept. 30, the day the Dow plummeted 770 points.

"When I got home that day, I had messages from 30 clients," Spears says... Internet psychics across the board saw a spike in traffic in the days following the initial market crash.

The real trend: allay your fears about money by giving your money to someone else. Try church instead for your blind-faith exercises—at least it's free!

As Moe tells Time Out about her dream job:

"My ideal job would be anything that thoroughly monopolizes my brain for a sufficiently lengthy portion of the day (10–14 hours) to render it incapable upon punching out of the sort of anxiety and/or guilt and/or existential despair that takes the fun out of drinking. It would be nice if the position involved writing and/or humor and/or a perverse fascination with finance, but seriously, a high-pressure barista environment would probably do the trick.”

Meanwhile, the laid-off CosmoGirls sound like just as much of a pain in the ass that they probably were in the hallways of Hearst: they like to go to a cutesy bar called Lolita, and their dream jobs range from "I would like to leverage my production and design skills from CosmoGirl to find a position within either area at a new publication" to "Fashion, style and photography are the three great passions of mine that I would rather not live without." Yawn!

Also, they think the "vibe" of the completely gentrified Lower East Side is "still very rock." Finish your Cosmos and get out, girls.

"no one probably reads either Women's Day Special or Boating"

these both happened 2 weeks and 1 week ago, respectively. first, half of the team that does the Women's Day Special Publications was let go, leaving four sad women behind to do it all. then a few days later, 4 members of the Boating magazine staff were kicked to the curb. rumor has it that both titles are going to be scaled back as far as how often they are published. (this would be a great place to make some "Hachette Filipacchi is a sinking ship" pun, but that might be way too easy for you guys). No one probably mentioned this to Gawker because no one probably reads either Women's Day Special Pub or Boating mag. i work here, and i still don't.

Conde Nasties Resign Themselves to Freelancing

Keith Blanchard, former EIC of Maxim, recently started a site called TheDailyLowdown.com. He's had trouble finding freelancers to work for the slave wages he's paying but said so far this week he's been inundated with requests for work, with many of the people having Conde Nast email addresses.

Fill Out Your Self-Evaluation; Then You're Fired

Last June my boss' boss sent me an email one afternoon asking to meet the following morning for my annual review. I thought it odd that the request came from him rather than from my boss, no one else in the organization was doing reviews, and he hadn't asked me to fill out the typical self-evaluation form. I asked if I should fill out a form and he was dismissive, said I could do it or not.

Red flags were flying, but I got my hands on a copy of the blank form and spent the rest of the afternoon, and the evening at home, completing a thoughtful, thorough self-evaluation, with goals and objectives for the next year. The next morning he came into my boss' office for the meeting, waved his copy of my evaluation form, and said, "We don't really need this. I'm not happy with the way things are going. I think you should look for a new job."

You're Just a Visitor Now

I walked into the employee's entrance of my building and the security guard said: "Visitors must use the main entrance."

So I had to walk around to the front, trade my (deactivated) employee badge for a visitor's badge, and then walk up to my office to clear out my personal effects - for which the cleaning guy had thoughtfully left a couple black plastic trash bags.

Work Nights & Weekends (Until You're Fired)

I moved to Portland, Maine to take a job as the content producer for MaineBusiness.com, which is owned by the Portland Press Herald, which is swiftly going under. I asked the guy who was hiring me, the head of the web products, if I there was going to be any chance that I would get laid off because I didn't want the job if there was. I was assured there was no way — because we were web people! Six weeks later I was canned.

Because they felt so bad for me they told me there was a night position at the paper. I would be cutting and pasting stories that other reporters wrote onto the website from 6:00 pm to 2:00 am, Tuesday through Saturday. Oh and if I didn't take it the company would change my status from "laid off" to "quit" — so there would go my unemployment benefits. I begrudgingly took the job.

After a panic attack that I was losing not only my nights but my weekends as well I started my new job. Six weeks later I was laid off. Again

"One big giant ass fuck, basically"

So, I worked for a company that was contracted by corporations to run their temp worker sourcing, I guess as a way to keep costs lower or something. Anyway, our company and the software we used was bought out by another company in the spring of 2007. The 'new' conglomerate company celebrated by flying everyone to Vegas to stay at the Bellagio for a weekend, including meals, and included a ticket to see Cirque d'Soleil or whatever for good measure. Oh, we also got $50 in chips for the Bellagio to use, which I promptly cashed in to use for food cause fuck that shit is expensive.

Six months later, the rumblings begin. Some people were laid off in another division a few weeks prior, one of my co-workers was forced to work for an Asian branch of a company, making her schedule change from 8am - 6pm EST to 6pm - 4am EST MAGICALLY overnight! Also, our boss stopped showing up to work for the two weeks prior, blaming stuff on her daughter but her daughter accidentally called the office at least twice in this period looking for her. Anyway, we get an email from corporate instructing everyone not to return to work until further notice.

I guess they ran out of money and filed for Chapter 11. Hundreds of temps at the companies we contracted for were never paid, and they weren't even WORKING for my company, just had the misfortune of being paid through them. Oh, I didn't get my final pay until five months later. Apparently, they hadn't been paying insurance premiums either and people who went to the doctor in November or December were being denied their claims because they had no idea they weren't insured any longer. One big giant ass fuck, basically.

[Photo: cover of the awesome Temp Slave! anthology]

(As always, if you have a layoff story, send it to tips@gawker.com)

Laid off 3 times in a year:

Yes, I have been laid off three times in a year. Actually, it was slightly less than 11 months.

Last October I was closing in on my 15th month at a publisher of magazines aimed at New York City tourists — I affectionately refer to it as The Worst Company Ever. The publisher is 200 years old, wears a giant wig and diapers, sings show tunes for clients who give in to her just to make her stop and is, essentially, an advertising sales person who very luckily found herself in the position but doesn't have the taste level to handle it. (The place has a turnover rate that rivals a Walmart store—last year's holiday card required the removal of 13 names, this year it's 15.). Months went by, and my turn only came up when I jokingly threw away a size large, "Made in Haiti" polo shirt with the company logo embroidered on the chest in my trash can.

In May, it happened again. This time, I wanted the job—I liked the job. I would be designing licensed accessories and stationery—adeparture from my publishing background, but a growth industry. Recession proof. The next week, I got my first samples back from Hong Kong on Wednesday, I got my health insurance on Thursday, and I — along with three others—was laid off on Friday. The best part about it is that one vice president took us all aside to tell us, while the other vice president took the spared to the showroom for a pep talk. I was in the bathroom, and didn't find out for hours that I was not one of the spared.

Now, in September, I was enjoying my eighth week freelancing at a company I really liked...Then, at 10:00 a.m. on a Friday I was unceremoniously told that that day would be my last and that all freelancers were being cut indefinitely. But, "thanks." I was drinking by 5:30.

And, now ... I'm a receptionist.

A "Classic Banking Fuckup," IM'd For All to See:

A friend at a big bank was recently informed of the elimination of his entire division via Reuters. A disgruntled internal source leaked it before the bank came up with a termination schedule, sold the division, or closed out its positions.The wire agency writeup about the elimination was picked up by an employee, and immediately IMed out, line by line, to the entire team.

Management panicked and shepherded everyone into a closed door meeting in order to prevent a trading floor riot. They've all been required to report to work for the past month while HQ develops a strategy that will minimize lawsuits for mental suffering. Still no status on who has a job. Another classic banking fuckup.

Let's Wait 'Til After Their Anniversary:

This was back in 2001. I worked at a small creative ad agency in the West Village. My wife also worked there. Together we made just enough to live in Manhattan and have a life. So, September 11 comes along and things get messy... By the end of September, there were already rumors of layoffs.Finally, layoff day came. It was supposed to be on Wednesday, but they moved it to Thursday. I got the axe. I went to my wife's office and she consoled me. Then it was her turn. She got canned. Why? Because the Creative Director thought she would feel uncomfortable working in the office that her husband was laid off from.

Oh, and the reason they moved the layoffs to Thursday? A friend of ours tipped them off that Wednesday was our wedding anniversary. Probably the worst part was that in the shadow of what was going on in the city at the time, none of this mattered. So we could not feel sorry for ourselves. And we didn't. We stayed and volunteered until we ran out of money and prospects and left the city just before Christmas.

Typical:

At my pre-ordained weekly meeting with my supervisor I was told I was being let go because the company was "going in a different direction". That direction, however, was not eliminating my position, but rather giving it to the intern who just graduated two weeks prior. I assume that move is saving them some salary payout and increasing their eye-candy quotient.

Anyway—have a good workday, everyone!

This assumes that there's a wide range of Playboy cover models. We're talking about a 18-26 age range, and the weight range cannot possibly be more than ten pounds. Taller? Everybody looks the same height in print. Bust size, which is also duly noted? BREAKING: straight men prefer breasts, regardless of economic conditions. There, done.

Anyway, here is their data, collected from 1965-2006. The age of the Playboy models ranged from 18-31—although there was only one 31-year-old and just two 27-year-olds. The rest were 26 or under.

[Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin via Kempt]

Even in 1873, they were using the phrase "fine-ass." This cartoon refers to "inflationary proposals" formed as a response to the panic.
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September 19, 1873

September 20, 1873

September 21, 1873

September 22, 1873

An October 1873 cartoon from Harper's showing President Grant helping America—embodied by a lady—out of the "wreckage of Wall Street." It's captioned, "I am glad to see that you are not seriously hurt. The houses in this 'Street' have been shaky and on false bases for a long time’.” [Sherman Square]

Home forclosures followed. From the Brooklyn Eagle, 1873. [Brownstoner]

Finally, here's how the Times explained the Panic of 1873, thirty-four years later, in 1907.


They were so interested in exploring the causes of the 1873 panic that year because another one occurred:

Sure, we don't save enough and put a little too much on credit cards and make semi-retarded mortgage decisions in our ceaselessly hopeful pursuit of the American Dream of ownership. But all of those books tell you to invest in a Roth IRA and the freaking stock market, and we all know what happens after you do that: IT FUCKING CRASHES AND ALL YOUR STUPID MONEY IS GONE. Some authors—like good old billionaire shadow investor George Soros's The New Paradigm for Financial Markets—have predicted this, which we of course ignored, not that we could have stopped it anyway.