For now at least, cheap is cool. Frugality is viewed as acceptable, sensible. The assumption is that this “Great Recession,” which has thrown the nation (and our retailers) all for a loop, will have lasting effects. Here’s why it won’t.
Weekend video: Le temps des cerises
I can’t believe I implied that I was done with the Belgian videos. Here we have Geike Arnaert and former professional whistler and amusement park owner Bobbejaan Schoepen, singing in their second language:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8VQnDxY8Yw]
Pay through the decades
From a new CBO publication, Changes in the Distribution of Workers’ Annual Earnings Between 1979 and 2007 (pdf):
New column: Get homes off welfare
My new column is up online and in the issue of TIME with Sgt. First Class Chet Millard on the cover. It’s about the real-estate-industrial complex. And if you’re wondering whether it was inspired by—and is shamelessly derivative of—Barbara’s TIME.com piece of few days ago, the answer is yes, of course it is.
Should You Get a Discount for Paying Cash?
When a consumer buys something with a credit card, the credit card company gets a cut of the transaction. Stores figure that cut into their pricing system, figuring that when they sell an item for $100, they don’t get all of that $100 if the purchaser uses plastic. If it’s a cash purchase, on the other hand, the store gets all of that $100.
Shout-Out: ‘How to Make Your Tools, Gadgets, and Appliances Last Forever’
Something breaks and what do you do? Normally, toss it in the trash and buy another. That’s probably a cheaper route than calling a repairman, plumber, or electrician. Not long ago, people were accustomed to taking a different strategy: fixing it themselves.
A headline-writing primer for the WSJ’s op-ed editor
A couple weeks ago, John F. Cogan, John B. Taylor and the middle-initial-challenged Volker Wieland had an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal headlined “The Stimulus Didn’t Work.” I was pretty nonplussed when I read it, but it was just now, while reading over the critiques of it by Brad DeLong/Mark Sadowski and Goldman Sachs economist …
Nope, no jobs here
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has just delivered another not-at-all encouraging employment report, with payroll employment down another 263,000 for the month of September, the unemployment rate up to 9.8%, and U-6 unemployment (which includes what the BLS calls “discouraged workers” who have given up actively looking for jobs, plus …
Ten Ways the Mall Has Changed During the Recession
The shopping mall, that wonderfully iconic, most American of places, is changing, and the economic downturn bears a lot of the responsibility. Store names that were once ubiquitous have disappeared. Vacancy rates are seriously high. And just about everybody is discounting merchandise and looking for new ways to connect to consumers.
It’s a Deal: Free Coffee at Starbucks Now to October 5
From today, October 2, through October 5, if you go into a Starbucks and taste VIA, the company’s new instant coffee, you’ll get a free brewed coffee as thanks for your time. More details here.
My sad Saturn farewell
The Cheapskate Blog’s Brad Tuttle writes that “the first new car I could truly call my own was a bare bones Saturn SL.” My first new car was a Saturn, too. Being no cheapskate, I splurged on an SL2. It was a 1992, just the second model year. I was living in Montgomery, Alabama, not all that far down the road from the Saturn factory …
Are we in the middle of the W?
UniCredit’s Harm Bandholz offers an interesting reading of one of the piles of economic releases that came out today:
The mild decline in the headline ISM and its most important subcomponents (production, new orders and employment) is so far the most clear-cut signal that the technical rebound of the US economy might have reached the
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