As we prepare for the holiday season in which we reflect upon the past year and make plans for the year to come, let us all begin to feel the creeping sense of fear that comes with the confident expert prediction: Recession 2015.
In a scene from straight out of a sitcom (or a horrible recession with no end in sight), a judge in Spain has ordered a feuding couple to partition their apartment right down the middle, in an attempt to stop the couple from incessantly fighting.
Just how rich is too rich? Allow this gentleman to demonstrate.
The U.S. of A got some great economic news this week: our national deficit is way smaller than expected (for the moment)! Hey, Europe, how are you guys doing over there? *snickers* Good? No?
The fiscal cliff is imminent. We are hurtling, not to mention barreling, toward it. Also, it's looming. Every news organization has been churning out folksy little cartoons explaining the situation at the rate of thousands a day since August. There have also been a lot of Wile E. Coyote jokes, and for that alone we…
You're not the only one sliding slowly into poverty: Due to new austerity measures, Queen Elizabeth II is taking a pay cut. Her salary, drawn from British taxpayer funds, will be limited to a mere $50 million this year.
Don't listen when they tell you Congress can't get anything done: It has finally lifted the five-year ban on slaughtering horses for human consumption in the U.S., creating literally dozens of jobs for people who want to slaughter horses and unshackling the horsemeat-for-human-consumption industry from the heel of…
The conventional wisdom is that since obesity rates are so high among the poorest Americans, that fast food is the grease-and-ketchup-soaked engine driving them upwards. But a new study on food consumption from UC Davis medical school got surprising results: It found that middle- and upper-middle income earners are…
Police Chief Michael Scott of Smithfield, N.C., has seen his 2012 gas budget cut by $10,000. He's about to ask the town council if he can reallocate some of his $30,000 office supply budget to pay for gas. If they don't allow it, do you know what he is going to do? That's right! He is going to let crime fester in the…
Remember the recession? Whew. That was terrible. Thank god that we're now more than two years into America's technical economic "recovery." How are you celebrating the recovery? Wait, don't tell me. I bet I can guess.
The economy grew at 2.5% last quarter, up from 1.3% the quarter before, according to newly released data from the Commerce Department. That's just enough growth to keep from plunging more people into the ranks of the unemployed, but nowhere near enough to start digging us out of the hole we're in.
For the first time in two years, Americans' income fell last month. The drop was a meager .1%, but it was accompanied by a .2% increase in spending, which means your costs went up by twice the amount your pay was cut. But don't worry, because analysts estimate that corporate earnings of the S&P 500 companies will…
If you grew up on the East Coast of the U.S., you've likely dined at a Friendly's restaurant in your lifetime, and very possibly more than once. It was the depressing, suburban chain restaurant that was a little less depressing than the others, mainly because the promise of an ice cream sundae — the "Happy Ending," as…
Doing their part to keep the struggling U.S. Postal Service afloat, Congressional Republican leaders sent a letter a to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday, demanding that he stop doing whatever it is that he's thinking of doing to help the economy, because they said so.
You know how no one has a job or money and everything's going to shit and you feel like a rat in a cage and the streets are erupting into a cauldron of rage and torn flesh? It's all in your head. According to the feds, violent crime was down 12% last year.
Meet "Carla," who earned her law degree a decade ago and actually used it, unlike some people we know. In 2009 she was laid off and couldn't find another law job, because they've all been outsourced or backsourced or stolen by the Olds. So she found what her law school's Office of Career Services might call "an…
In August, the United States of America, the mightiest economic power the world has ever seen, created the following number of jobs for its citizens: zero. Zero new jobs, according to the very latest jobs figures released this morning, which "show an economic recovery that appears to be puttering out."
To be completely honest with you, the day at the stock market did not go well. The Dow was down 634 points. Which is, we have to tell you, not good. It's actually the sixth largest one-day drop in history.
When you woke up this morning, did everything seem a little less... reliable? It did, didn't it? That's because credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's no longer regards the U.S. as a risk-free borrower, despite a $2 trillion error in its initial accounting.
Stocks opened "sharply lower" in Europe on Friday, following "heavy selling" in Asia. Just in time for the U.S. job numbers! You know what I'd buy stock in, if I could? Pictures of traders looking worried. Also, moonshine. [WSJ]
