Seen the movie Up in the Air? It’s about a guy (if you can call George Clooney just a “guy”) who works for a company that hires out its professional downsizers to companies who are conducting layoffs. These axe pros then give the workers the bad news, absorbing for their bosses their angry, bitter, and panicked reactions. Interviews with real people who were laid off are interspersed throughout.

Critics are touting the film as Oscar material. But what do audiences and non-professional reviewers think? We looked at Yahoo! Movies and Rotten Tomatoes. A solid majority of viewers liked the movie (myself included), but some of the most interesting assessments are negative, so those are probably over-represented here.

From The Big Picture blog, a post called Banking Sector Remains (literally) unchanged: Ever wonder why the banking sector continues to operate as it always has? Here’s a possible answer: According to a report on Corporate Governance by Professor Emma Coleman Jordan of the Georgetown University Law Center…one simple issue might help to explain why [...]

Gas prices are higher than any time since 2008, so a site like GasBuddy.com might be especially useful right about now. The site works by members of the public spotting gas prices and posting them. Points earned towards prizes like free gas — plus the altruism of helping your fellow driver and sticking it to [...]

Hear about this one? Complaint choirs. Apparently, they’ve been around a few years, but if you ask me, the concept is the ultimate Internet meme for our current plight: Groups of people getting together to sing (quite well, actually) a litany of things that irritate them. Naturally, economic issues figure in. In Juneau, they grouse [...]

The site Being Frugal.net has a feature called Tightwad Tuesdays with some interesting tricks for saving money on cleaning around the house: Homemade cleaning products – how to clean almost anything with baking soda, vinegar, and dishwashing detergent More Homemade cleaners – stain remover, car cleaner, dishwasher detergent, oven cleaner The Frugal Cleaning Cabinet – [...]

There’s a school of thought out there that holds that the policies of the Fed and the Treasury, while perhaps preventing a full-blown economic depression, are sooner or later going to lead to massive inflation. Even if that’s true, one would hope the situation won’t spin as out of control as it has in hyperinflationary [...]

This recent article in the New York Times details the likely rise in customer cable bills that will result from the various battles over subscriber fees going on between content providers and cable companies (like the just-settled News Corp.-Time Warner Cable dispute, for instance).

The last thing anyone needs these days is to pay more per “SpongeBob SquarePants” episode. But what can ya do? Go without “Keeping Up With the Kardashians”? Unlikely. They got you by the proverbial short hairs.

Unless…you ask them for a lower rate. That’s right. Perhaps you don’t know that just as they do with credit card rates, a lot of people get their bill reduced by playing a little poker with their cable provider. There are many blogs and web sites out there that outline the process…

YouTube’s a strange place…

It’s a different type of “bail-out.” The Huffington Post and friends are spearheading a nascent movement to move your money from the big financial giants to community banks. From a column by Arianna Huffington and Rob Johnson: The big banks on Wall Street, propped up by taxpayer money and government guarantees, have had a record [...]

“Laid Off” by C.H.A.Z.Z.