The summer of 2009 is proving to be a reality check for college students and recent grads. Instead of rollicking trips abroad or working at no-pay internships that their families can no longer afford to bankroll, college kids are grinding out the steamy days of summer doing manual labor—and they’re happy to have the work.
Are Luxury Goods Goners?
Within a single section of today’s WSJ, there are stories lamenting the steep declines of sales in the luxury wine and luxury car markets, and another piece noting that haute couture label Christian Lacroix recently filed for bankruptcy protection.
It’s a Deal: Free Pint of Starbucks Ice Cream
With the help of Facebook, Starbucks is giving away coupons for free pints of ice cream. Log into your Facebook account, and through July 19, you can share a pint with a friend. Starbucks is giving out 20,000 coupons a day. Click here for details.
The Obama administration’s consumer financial protection plan meets Congress
Watching Congressional hearings on important topics always seems beforehand like it’s going to be a good idea. You know: Our elected representatives, asking the experts (or the culprits) the questions that need to be asked. Every once in a while it does work out this way: I thought the Senate Banking Committee’s hearings on the banking …
Adventures in Pickling and Preserving: Not Cheap
A Salon writer attempts to make preserves as a way to be eco and money conscious. Though the food tastes fantastic, the experiment is less than successful.
Leftovers: It’s What’s for Dinner—Again
More than ever, no one wants to be wasteful. This is difficult when it comes to food, about 25 percent of which you bring into the house is never eaten. Making a meal with just the right amount of food seems impossible, so what do you do with leftovers? There’s eating them again and again, of course, until it feels like a chore. What are …
Is global financial meltdown the best thing that ever happened to microfinance?
Microlending was one of the biggest parties in finance in recent years—an era of many parties. A new report out from the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation (CSFI) details how things have changed over the past year-and-a-half. The report is based on a survey of 430 institututions in 82 countries and reveals that what’s …
Dates Gone Bad in the Recession
Perhaps there is no such thing as a good cheap date. The website MyVeryWorstDate is fairly self-explanatory: Folks (pretty much all women) write in with anecdotes of dates who are crude, who are obnoxious, who suddenly lose their pants, who are under house arrest (with the leg monitoring device and all), who go shoplifting during the …
Wait! Wait! You mean it’s not all the bankers’ fault?
The indispensable Epicurean Dealmaker—whom I would surely hire if (a) I were in need of an investment banker and (2) I could figure out who he is—makes a rare defense of his kind:
I stick by my assertion that we did not create the huge global demand for riskless returns that is at the root of our current predicament. Investment
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Breaking news: Regulators are (re)discovering that maybe speculation CAN be excessive
The announcement this morning (pdf!) by Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman Gary Gensler that his agency is considering imposing limits on the size of trades by energy futures speculators may amount to something of a landmark (or turning point, or whatever portentous phrase you prefer) in Washington’s relationship to financial …
Big Discounts on Home Furnishings, Cars, Clothing, and More
SmartMoney lists five types of stores where business is bad this summer—and where therefore, consumers have their pick of steeply discounted merchandise. In the home furnishings category, for example, more than 1,000 items at Pier 1 are currently being sold at discounts of at least 50 percent. There are also deals to be had on …