One reason for the evergreen popularity of those "explaining the coming financial collapse for dummies" pieces is that 99% of journalists—even on the business beat!—don't know a damn thing about money and finance, and writing these pieces is a convenient way to get paid to try to figure it out. New York weighs in wth "An Idiot's Guide to Financial Crises", the casual version of the New York Times' Can't Grasp Credit Crisis? Join the Club. New York's take is more personal: apparently a recession means that Adam Sternbergh will lose his job! Considerably more alarming: the recession is already causing the prices of cheeseburgers and bagels to skyrocket. [NYM, NYM]