The Fed will buy $600 billion in U.S. debt. No one really knows if this will do any good.

At least the beer industry is doing well.

The Way We Live Now: making you an offer. A helluva offer! An offer that—we won't say you can't refuse it, but you'd certainly lose most of your social standing by doing so. Winners take offers! Offers like this!

The Way We Live Now: writing so many checks we get carpal tunnel syndrome! Counting so much money our finger nerves are permanently damaged! And also working two jobs, one of which is "janitor." The other is also "janitor."

The Way We Live Now: wrapped in copious robes of flowing cotton. Cotton hats, cotton shoes, a flowing cotton train trailing behind us, sleeping on heaping mounds of cotton. Cotton is money! Everything else is not.

When we went to college, tuition was a Buffalo nickel and a meal could be had for an eightpence. Sadly, a new survey says that prices are up—way up. Hope you kids like Home State U!

The Way We Live Now: making sacrifices to the oracle. If it demands we mortgage our underwater home to the hilt in order to raise cash to pacify the oracle, then lo, we shall. The oracle's blessing is luxury itself.

The Way We Live Now: dancing naked. Forever, hopefully! Of course we know that the music stops eventually. But before it does, we need a new house, a new portfolio, and a new economy. And junk food, on a train.

The Way We Live Now: less like a rich mom and more like a poor mom. Less like a dream realized and more like a dream deferred. Less like Jesus. More like a renegade tax man, out for justice.

The New York Times Co. is ending its Employee Stock Purchase Plan, where employees could buy company stock at a discount. Nobody wanted to buy that crappy stock, apparently! And with good reason. The email that just went out to staffers is below.

The Way We Live Now: saving for McNuggets. Though prices may be higher, no price is too high. Not for a bite-size taste of that savory golden flesh, made of stockpiled gold, killed quickly, with no thought to looming disaster.

In the future, credit cards will be funner: they'll have buttons and batteries and "tiny lights" and all the bloopity bleep-bloop that you, the consumers, love. It will be that much more enjoyable to pay off your crushing college debt.

The Way We Live Now: riding dirty. Clocking dollars. Unretiring, training for the worst, and calling off Christmas. It's been one of those kinds of eons, hasn't it?

What's the latest in Bell, California, America's Most Corrupt Town? The eight Bell officials arrested for looting the city's coffers are due in court today. An audit found they were greedier than expected. And they're being chased by a clown!

The Way We Live Now: a sort of Ebay lifestyle. Back when we were pocketing billions, we never thought we'd be auctioning off our bedroom slippers just to make ends meet. Then again, we never thought China'd have money. China???

Average Goldman Sachs pay is down to a meager $370,000 per year. Poor babies! Etc.

The Way We Live Now: emerging cautiously into the terrifying light. Sure, being an "emerging market" is better than being a "scum-ridden basement of a Third World hellhole market," but it's not all good. There's the ominous money, for example.

The New York Times Co.'s revenues dropped about 3% in the third quarter, as rising digital ad revenue (+15%) failed to offset declining print ad revenue (-6%). Analysts are disappointed. This is the new normal, FYI.

The Way We Live Now: Japanesely. Just as Michael Crichton predicted. America is a second-class faded empire, following in the footsteps of the Rising Sun. We let luxury drain us, embrace the culture of poverty, and prepare for the end.

Saudi Prince Walid bin Talal is one of the biggest shareholders of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, owner of rabidly anti-"Ground Zero Mosque" Fox News. He's also a Muslim. Which side of the Prince's identity will win, do you think?