Bernie Madoff's in jail! The stock market is up! Enjoy the temporary dose of relief, because the recession is just getting bleaker. Even fun is now bankrupt:

In your meaty Tuesday media column: rumors of coming layoffs (and a die-off?) at OK! magazine, a golf magazine is killed, advertising plummets, media companies may default, and Americans don't know a damn thing:

We already know the recession sucks for journalists because—to generalize slightly—they have been laid off. But it sucks for working journalists, too. Guess who else got laid off: all their sources!

In his memo yesterday, Conde Nast CEO Chuck Townsend told the company's employees that "difficult decisions" are coming. How bad could Conde's 2009 really be? Catastrophic, potentially.

Give Gordon Ramsay money now, prats! The John McCain of food continues to bring the awesome on cooking reality shows. But he is severely impaired when it comes to bringing the money, to banks.

Do you know what today is? It's the 20th anniversary of Time Warner. The massive merger that created the media behemoth happened on March 4, 1989. Time Warner was the future! And now?

Here you see a photo of swindler Bernie Madoff partying down on a recent New Year' eve. Partying down to hell, ha. In non-party hat Madoff news: is his wife delusional, or just greedy?

Despite the fact that there are not enough jobs for people already in journalism, kids still pay big money to go to J-schools. Where will they find work? New ideas for a new world:

Whenever you think it's about as bad as it can get, it gets worse. The Dow finished the trading day at 6,763, its lowest level since 1997. How low can it go?

Well now, let's just open the paper and have a look at the...OHMIGOD, what the hell, Jesus Christ, is the entire world economy collapsing today, worse than ever? Yes it is.

Ooo, the SEC has finally released the good stuff on Stanford Financial, the mini-Madoff Ponzi scheme that made $8 billion disappear. Incredibly, the company's Southern Christian leaders were big hypocritical frauds! Jesus hated money-lenders:

We knew that celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz had some serious financial problems. But we didn't know they were so bad that she had to sign over all of her photos to a pawn shop:

Rupert Murdoch is fundamentally a newspaper man. That's how he built News Corp. into a world-strangling media conglomerate. But will his stubborn soft spot for papers be the thing that brings the company down?

If you ran a magazine (maybe you do!), what would you consider a reasonable salary for the head of your little magazine industry trade group? 'Click through' and find out the real, ridiculous answer!

As if it wasn't bad enough that Bernie Madoff went and took millions from wealthy Jewish people in Palm Beach and then made it disappear, it seems some gentiles down there are happy about it!

Allen Stanford, the Texas billionaire fingered by the FBI this week for an $8 billion financial scam, tried to go underground. But now he's been caught! In Virginia! The land of lovers—of money:

The New York Times Co. just announced that it's suspending its dividend. Its dividend per share will now be zero cents. What does this mean? That it sucks to be a Sulzberger, for one.

Crapola, wouldn't you know it, today on Wall Street the stock market is nearing its lowest level in the past decade. But look on the bright side:

Everybody (especially us!) loves chastising the rich for all their, you know, spending of money. Well the joke's on us, because rich people buying shit is the only hope for our economy. Spend, fuckers!

How bad is the recession? So bad that it's 'eroding' the 'foundation' of real estate in the Hamptons! No seriously, a billionaire's beach house is literally sliding into the ocean. And it gets worse!