By some supervillains, apparently.

Upsides To the Economic Meltdown

Housing

Only when we begin living in hastily thrown together shanty towns will we appreciate the wonder of living in hastily thrown together shanty towns. (Instead of Hoovervilles, we'd call 'em Bushburgs or maybe Pelosipalities.)

There's no community like shanty town community, where everyone hangs their clothes to dry and the same line and make your own fun with communal makeshift bowling games using 10 emptied salt and pepper shakers and a baby.

The rest is at:

http://www.the-iss.com/2008/09/economic_meltdown.php

Fight the man! PayPal accepted.

The "'" in the SUB' shirt is the mathematical symbol for prime...SUB' = sub prime...get it?

There is the "Will the economic meltdown affect you" flow chart:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1077

The required reading should be this:

http://www.deepcapture.com/the-naked-short-selling-that-toppled-wall-street/

Here are a couple of satirical blog posts about the bailout.

First, a Q&A written during the frantic negotiations:

http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=24235

Next, a parent's perspective on those irresponsible people on Wall Street.

http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=25620

Am I the only one who found the uncritical recommendation of the "Long Johns" skit linked to above disturbing?

I mean, it's all pretty funny, until about 3 minutes in, when they pin the entire subprime mess on the idea of lending money to "an unemployed black man sitting on a porch in a screen vest."

There are numerous articles circulating on the net at the moment explaining why this explanation of the subprime mess doesn't hold water (google "CRA" to find some). But what bothers me is not that this bit of casual racism was included in a British comedy sketch from some time ago, but that Salon enthusiastically recommended the piece without noting the nastiness of it.

I miss Farhad Manjoo. I can't imagine him having done this.