Whatever Happened To The Econopocalypse?
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on March 1, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Sunday, March 1st, 2009Tips For Surviving The Coming Depression
Whatever happened to that Econopocalypse they were promising us? I’m from the generation who grew up thinking NORAD would mistake a piece of space junk coming over the horizon for a Russian nuclear missile, and we’d all die as a result of accidental “Mutual Assured Destruction”. So in spite of the fact that I’ve since somehow managed to become a disturbingly happy, emoticon-using 
utopian, when you talk about the coming apocalypse, I for one will be getting ready. Which is why I’ve rounded up some tips for you. There are plenty of lists like this one, which suggests ridiculously obvious things like accepting a job below your expectations, growing a garden, or managing your money better. And this one , which sounds like it must’ve been written by the same mortgage jockeys that got us into this mess. But I especially liked this one, which includes tips like “Stockpile Drugs” and “Buy a Gun”, or my personal favorite “Blow your credit cards”. You also might want to pick up some cooking tips from Clara, the sweet 91-year-old grandma that’s being exploited to create the Depression Cooking series on YouTube. Although you better hurry; I don’t see how we’ll have broadband if we’re standing in food lines. And for those motivated enough to keep looking for work, don’t be surprised if the interview process evolves to adapt to the new climate as well. See the clip featured here for some insight. Personally, I figure if I can survive cold war paranoia, eight years of Bush, and a culture that that seems to revolve around reality TV, I can survive this. See you in the dole line!
Are You A Psychopath?
[ 4 Comments ]Posted on November 12, 2008 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008Maybe you should go into finance.
  Investment bankers have all the fun… |
No, all my rage has a perfectly rational foundation, thank you very much. For some reason, the recent economic crisis reminded me of the idea floating around back in 2004 that maybe corporate culture was breeding and encouraging actual psychopaths. Thanks to the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, I keep running into articles that suggest that this is indeed the case. What else could explain the audacity of the inclusion of a $140 Billion windfall tax in the Treasury Department’s economic bailout package? Or the aberrant behavior of individuals in the finance industry described in this lengthy but well-written Portfolio.com piece? The election was a nice distraction, but is anyone out there still even slightly angry? If we turned the tables and went all American Psycho
*29 questions, and don’t fall for the checkbox trick at the end.
Silly Billionaire Doesn’t Realize Economy Was Fixed Last Weekend
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 14, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008George Soros on the Economic Crisis
In these troubled financial times, it’s refreshing to hear a successful financial expert (George Soros is worth about $7 billion) talk commonsensically about the current economic crisis. Except that he’s basically saying that we’re completely screwed. If you have about six minutes, watch this Bill Moyers interview, in which Soros basically says that the extreme form of capitalism that we’ve been playing with (he calls it free-market fundamentalism) could lead to the end of the human race. He balances that seemingly extreme notion with more common-sense talk about how capitalism and socialism have something in common that could make either one succeed or fail catastrophically, i.e.: the human element. He distills that “human element” down to the sense of social responsibility possessed by the leaders of a given society, not only during a time of crisis, but in the ongoing management of the society.