Font nerds in the workplace.

Oxidize isn't a personal finance blog, but this link was pretty interesting to me. Take a day off, once a year, to adjust your finances. Considering the potential effect this appears to be time well spent.

I know I care what Lady GaGa is... or isn't.... wearing.

Interesting excerpt from Michael Lewis' new book "The Big Short", focusing on how a select few financial analysts figured out how to short the credit bubble and make fortunes. Big fortunes.

or so suggests this man ...

When approached by a former client who still owes money, this fellow does what all designers should . . . Hilarity ensues . . .

In 1986, Williams High Speed changed the economics of pinball forever. Pinball developers began to see how they could take advantage of programmable software to monitor, incentivize, and ultimately exploit the players. They had two instruments at their disposal: the score required for a free game, and the match probability.

Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves.

"The Idea turned out to be a textbook case of business economics: Buy low, sell high and eliminate the middleman. Things happened quickly after that. Suddenly, Nate and Topher and all of their friends had more cash than they'd ever dreamed of, along with expensive cars, hot girlfriends and fancy lakefront homes. And then, just as quickly, they began to lose control. Harder drugs, guns, paranoia, eventually violence -- it was like a movie, everyone agrees. "Mini-Scarface," chuckles Nate's lawyer Frank Cikutovich."

A glut of oil availability caused by the recession means that crude available for immediate purchase is currently cheaper than that bought on longer-term or "future" contracts – a practice known as "contango". The result is that independent traders have been rushing to buy the cheaper "spot" oil and storing it wherever they can – namely in under-employed tanker fleets, leaving the ships as floating oil storage – in anticipation of a sharp rise in price as the global economy begins to recover.

Howl at the moon, baby.

Shout House Dueling Piano Bar, Borders, Hooters, Applebee's, Hard Rock Cafe, GameWorks, Jimmy John's, Starbucks, Coldstone Creamery, and GameStop. Get me 5,000 gallons of epoxy and a spray canister so we can create The Aughts Bubble Museum.

As a follow up to J.Ryan's post. Here is a Fortune Magazine article describing bi-partisan concern over the stimulus driven bulge in federal deficits. Also a description of several potential (arguably Draconian) measures required to counteract the pending doom.

Economically, is it 1930 again?

It's a long article but has everything. Over extended expats living in their cars, Slave labor, polluted beaches, government cover-ups. Yeah, good read.

It will be the nation's largest daily newspaper to shift to an entirely digital news product.

Different strokes, for different folks.

It's starting to seem like it ...

First off, I'll offer a critique of the just-passed $800 billion package. The ultimate question is whether it will work or not. After six years of school, a master's degree in economics and $40k of student debt, my expert opinion is....maybe.

More than 200,000 job cuts have been announced so far this year, 68,000 today alone. Nearly 2.6 million jobs were lost over 2008, the highest yearly job-loss total since 1945.