This blog lacks the editorial patience to determine what the best posts of the year were. However, we do have enough time to pull together a big list of other publisher’s best of 2011. Many of them are lists within lists: Lifehacker Best of 2011 Main Street most popular stories of 2011 Top political scandals [...]

How Much of a $100k Salary is Taxed Around the World: You could move to Europe and pay more taxes, or go to Russia and pay less. Or, America, you can maybe not complain so much. (Economist) How the Plummeting Price of Cocaine Fueled the Nationwide Drop in Violent Crime: Need I say more? (The [...]

Good for reading while your spouse preps the food, and impressing people at the dinner table with your useless knowledge. The economics of turkey: Do turkey prices go up around Thanksgiving?  Or do they fall?  If they fall, why would they fall when everyone buys turkey at the same time?  How much turkey can you [...]

Do you remember Robert Reich? You probably don’t but he was the Secretary of Labor under Clinton and a well-known political economist. Apparently he’s got a sense of humor about his profession as here he is explaining what happens to the US if our debt continues to get downgraded. (Via Gizmodo) Here are some other [...]

Loyal readers will remember last year when I was nominated for a Plutus Award. These awards are for bloggers to be recognized for their contributions in personal finance related fields. There’s a specific section for small and part-time bloggers such as myself. Last year I won the award for best Economics blog and I’ve been [...]

The 24 hour news cycle on TV was once considered the worst thing to ever happen to news. But I would argue that the presence of too many news websites and blogs has ruined journalism even more. Still, here’s a collection from both that just makes just makes me sick. Apple touches top spot by [...]

The best comics: The one using pictures of politicians A collection of cartoons about us from around the world A slideshow from MSNBC And here’s a huge repository of political cartoons: PoliticalCartoons.com

It seems like for over a year we saw headlines of nothing but layoffs.  Over the last few months we’ve started to see that again.  The official statistics on jobs make this not at all surprising.  Unemployment is up and jobless claims numbers are not where they need to be.  But other companies are hiring [...]