Weep, weep children, for surely now we are in the darkest of hours. Wall Street pay suffered its worst decline in modern history last year. Is this not a "wake-up call," America?

Gold prices rose above $1,250 per ounce today, the highest price ever. Downside: it's a reaction of panicked investors to the ongoing total collapse of the European and, yes, global economies. Upside: it's a great time for chain-snatchers. Tie.

The Way We Live Now: Purely on assumption. We assume people are living. As far as we know. We haven't heard any differently. Not since we shut down the suicide hotlines. It makes the news much calmer, you see.

Yesterday, we asked you, the economically astute people slacking off at work, how Britain could save some money, lest it be mired in pauperdom for "generations." We've culled hundreds of comments into five ideas that could work. Pay attention, Brits.

The Way We Live Now: Celebrating the infallibility of economics. Why doesn't the mainstream media inform you of the upside of this recession? For every drawback, there's a draw-forward. You don't see everyone taking sick days any more, do you?

We knew the Brits were economically fucked, but we didn't know just how economically fucked. The prime minister says huge cutbacks must be made to mitigate potential "decades" of financial peril. Do you have any ideas for them?

The Way We Live Now: Going about this the wrong way. What is this, backwards day, economically speaking? You don't give the working class benefits and outrageous salaries, or bring poverty to the suburbs. Duh. Is it the Walgreens booze?

The bids are in for Newsweek! Who wants to be the next owner of this classic American magazine, now that the Washington Post Co. has acknowledged it will never make a penny? A diverse group of...interesting people.

The Way We Live Now: Cutting where it hurts. Cutting teacher salaries and cutting jobs and cutting your bank account—that we can deal with. But cutting back on fresh flowers at The Four Seasons? This has gone too far.

The Way We Live Now: Giving up on it all. Why not just walk away? From your mortgage. From your, haha, "job," if it existed. From the crappy bus, and your crappy investments. And your art...well, keep the art.

The Way We Live Now: Pandering to the poors. Of course being poor makes the masses upset, but that's no reason to engage in the lowest form of populism. Whither the landlords, the owners, the moguls? Let's remember who's boss.

Ken Starr—a famous investment adviser with a long list of celebrity clients, not the Clinton prosecutor—was arrested this morning and charged with running a Ponzi scheme. Also arrested: former NYC Council president Andrew Stein. Big scandal's afoot! [Updated]

We always laugh when, say, someone's arrested for brazenly offering weed for sale on Craigslist. Our apologies to those fools. It turns out that the dumbest criminals of all are trying to pull off insider trading. Very, very poorly.

The Way We Live Now: Fulfilling our old bright ideas. Facts of the world be damned! You know what would be great right about now? A $1.3 billion tower of superluxury apartments in Midtown Manhattan. This is a good idea.

John Wren is CEO of the massive, ominously named advertising and PR conglomerate Omnicom. As part of his contract, whenever he dies, the (publicly traded) company pays his heirs $41 million. This benefits the shareholders by....????

The Way We Live Now: Feeling that sickening whooooooooaaaaaaa feeling in our guts again. You know that one? It's the feeling you get when the market's tanking, your employees are quitting, and masked bandits just made off with your gold.

The Way We Live Now: Minding our reforms. We are reform-minded! Populists, embrace us. We are here to rein in those Wall Street bastards. Just as soon as we handle the collapse of real estate, college, child care, and roads.

Oh, turns out those new $20 movie tickets were "a mistake." Come back! Please!

With the release of the appropriately monstro-schlocky Shrek Forever After on IMAX, movie tickets (in Manhattan, at least) are passing the "symbolically important" $20 price point. Yea, you know what else is symbolically important? Netflix. [WSJ]

The Way We Live Now: Having those same old troubles again. Remember that time, not too long ago, when we had the incident with, you know, the world economy plunging into hellfire and chaos? That thing? Yea. Comeback time!