Link Banana

The day that thing stopped going up seems like a decade ago. Oh, it was.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

While recent unemployment numbers give us more reason to fear, it’s worth considering the oddball effects of the recession, like that the toothfairy can now only afford about $1.50 per tooth. The rate was over $2 not more than six months ago.

(via Ideas)

Postscript: I’m aware I may be inaccurate in calling this a recession, but I prefer it’s brevity to “economic crisis”, “credit crunch”, “economic readjustment”, etc.

For the first time in years, China has taken Mao off a denomination of currency (and — it being a commemorative Olympics bill — replaced him with the “birds nest” stadium). Despite relevant historical and cultural issues, my only comment is that it just looks wrong to me.

(via MeFi)

Calling to mind this story, a British website paid people to stand on the street with “If you ask me for a £5 note you can have it” sandwich boards. They report surprisingly low acceptance of the offer.

(via Boing Boing)

It’s a pretty clever idea: rather than wasting money for adspace in periodicals or buses, drop that money from the sky and take advantage of the free coverage that brings.

(via Passport)

Stilling showing a penchant for interesting but useless charts (something I understand far too well) Good takes a look at the price of museum admission.

This is slightly crazy:

For the first part of their study Dr Alter and Dr Oppenheimer picked 37 “volunteers” at random from the university’s canteen. They asked them to estimate how many simple objects—gumballs, paperclips and pencils—they could purchase with either a standard dollar bill or a Susan B. Anthony dollar coin that was presented to them. Susan B. Anthony dollars are legal tender but, having been produced only from 1979-81 and then again in 1999, they are rarely seen in circulation.

After the volunteers had made their estimates, they were asked to indicate on a scale of one to seven how familiar they were with either the banknote or the coin. Dr Alter and Dr Oppenheimer were not surprised to find that all participants were less familiar with the coin than with the banknote. Nor were they that surprised to find a difference in how the participants valued coin and note (the expectation that there would be a difference was, after all, the point of doing the experiment). They were, however, flabbergasted by the size of the difference. People offered the banknote believed, on average, that they could use it to buy 83 paperclips, 72 napkins or 46 sweets. Those offered the coin thought 39 paperclips, 51 napkins or 27 sweets. In other words, the note was believed to be almost twice as valuable as the coin.

And essentially the same thing happened when they offered two one-dollar bills versus one two-dollar bill.

The UK’s Royal Mint does it right:

As you can see [by clicking the title link], the Shield of the Royal Arms has been given a contemporary treatment and its whole has been cleverly split among all six denominations from the 1p to the 50p, with the £1 coin displaying the heraldic element in its entirety. This is the first time that a single design has been used across a range of United Kingdom coins.

(via kottke)

This completely pointless (and if memory serves, illegal), but I found Spock Lincoln rather amusing. Click the title for more.

(via Boing Boing)

Though I’m wary of most new organization playing with economics or statistics, this Reuters story qualifies for being both modestly interesting and completely plausible:

At U.S. warehouse club stores, a growing number of shoppers are giving up steak for cheaper chicken. Coffee sales are soaring at McDonald’s, while higher-priced Starbucks slows. Restaurants are serving fewer customers because more people are eating at home.

Stung by the housing slump, tightening credit terms, and rising inflation, U.S. households are finding ways to cut back, putting a damper on the consumer spending that is the driving force behind the economy.

The New York Times made the most interesting — and pretty — graph I’ve seen recently. It charts the box office receipts of major movies from 1986 to present.

(via kottke)

I heard about this site a while ago (and had the idea before that), but I just noticed that it actually launched.

stickK is a web-based company that helps you achieve your personal goals through “Commitment Contracts.” You create a contract obliging you to achieve a specific goal within a specific time-frame. By doing so, you put your reputation at stake. You may also choose to wager money to give yourself added incentive to succeed. If you do succeed, you get your money back. If you fail, the money is forfeited to charity, or to one of several causes, or to a person of your choosing. stickK’s services are absolutely free.

I think the charity donation aspect could also be used like the mythic SnūzNLūz so that you really feel motivated.

Daniel Gross pens a dissatisfied — but friendly — letter to rich America in which he implores them to be responsible and spend us out of this financial downturn. It’s a playful idea that’s certainly worthy of a read.

Yes, we’ve heard that the widespread woes of subprime borrowers are now hurting the primest of prime borrowers. (An act of karmic justice, perhaps?) Thousands of investment bankers are losing their jobs, and year-end bonuses for many on Wall Street were disappointing. We feel your pain. But that’s no reason to stop spending. Stagnant wages haven’t stopped the rest of us from dipping into our nonexistent savings to pay for bigger TVs and smaller cell phones. When we run out of cash, we borrow against our homes. Then we max out the credit cards, and start raiding 401(k)s and penny jars. We regard living beyond our means as a patriotic duty. Maybe you should too!

As vivid proof that Robert Mugabe has mismanaged Zimbabwe’s economy all the way into hyperinflation, his government is introducing new denominations:

$1 million, $5 million and $10 million notes. The highest existing note, introduced just last month, is $750,000. The new $10 million note is the equivalent of about $4 in American currency at the black market exchange rate used by most Zimbabweans. A hamburger at an ordinary cafe costs about $15 million in Zimbabwe money, or $6 American. Cash has dried up and long lines have become a feature at banks and A.T.M.’s.

For a brief but informative introduction to Zimbabwe, two paragraphs from The Economist’s Backgrounders.