We don't talk a lot about politics on Neatorama, but surely you've heard that Greece is in a big economic trouble that threatens the very foundation of the European Union.

What's going on there? Russell Shorto visited Athens, Greece and wrote this intriguing story over at The New York Times about how regular Greeks are living today:

By many indicators, Greece is devolving into something unprecedented in modern Western experience. A quarter of all Greek companies have gone out of business since 2009, and half of all small businesses in the country say they are unable to meet payroll. The suicide rate increased by 40 percent in the first half of 2011. A barter economy has sprung up, as people try to work around a broken financial system. Nearly half the population under 25 is unemployed. Last September, organizers of a government-sponsored seminar on emigrating to Australia, an event that drew 42 people a year earlier, were overwhelmed when 12,000 people signed up. Greek bankers told me that people had taken about one-third of their money out of their accounts; many, it seems, were keeping what savings they had under their beds or buried in their backyards. One banker, part of whose job these days is persuading people to keep their money in the bank, said to me, “Who would trust a Greek bank?”

Link (Photo: Lars Tunbjork/NY Times)

It's election season and the economy is in everyone's mind, so Zach Weiner of SMBC comics came up with this handy dandy chart of How To Talk About The Economy: Link - via Blame It On The Voices

If you’re so broke that you must stoop to buying a card that screams “economy!” on the front, then you’re better off making one from bubblegum wrappers, or not sending one at all.

Cheekily, the message inside reads “My love for you is priceless!”

The card costs 7p. However much that is in American cents, it’s pretty cheap. Link -via Metafilter

(YouTube Link)

The internet sensation behind the song “Chocolate Rain” returns to teach us a little something about the U.S. economy. Tay Zonday makes a little more sense than he did in his previous videos, but i’m still not sure I understand what’s happening with my U.S. dollar situation. Maybe somebody else needs to make an educational song about the economy, preferably someone with a degree in economics!

–via BuzzFeed

Plenty of people are irritated with the banking system right now, but you know people are angry when people are willing to pay $25,000 for a painting of a Chase bank burning up:

Tapping into popular sentiment, Alex Schaefer’s painting of a Chase bank on fire just sold on eBay for $25,200. Part of what drove up the price was online buzz after police questioned him while he was painting it, asking him if he planned to do what the painting depicted.

While I wouldn’t pay that much for one of these paintings, I certainly support the sentiment Mr. Schaefer is expressing.

Link Via Consumerist

It's probably just a matter of time before China becomes the largest economy in the world. When it does claim the top spot, what sort of dragon will it be? Will China be a benign hegemon?

The Economist pontificates:

If China does usurp America, what kind of hegemon will it be? Some argue that it will be a “premature” superpower. Because it will be big before it is rich, it will dwell on its domestic needs to the neglect of its global duties. If so, the world may resemble the headless global economy of the inter-war years, when Britain was unable, and America unwilling, to lead. But Mr Subramanian prefers to describe China as a precocious superpower. It will not be among the richest economies, but it will not be poor either. Its standard of living will be about half America’s in 2030, and a little higher than the European Union’s today.

With luck China will combine its precocity in economic development with a plodding conservatism in economic diplomacy. It should remain committed to preserving an open world economy. Indeed, its commitment may run deeper than America’s, because its ratio of trade to GDP is far higher.

According to the IMF, the Age of America will end in 2016:

In addition to comparing the two countries based on exchange rates, the IMF analysis also looked to the true, real-terms picture of the economies using "purchasing power parities." That compares what people earn and spend in real terms in their domestic economies.

Under PPP, the Chinese economy will expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016. Meanwhile the size of the U.S. economy will rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion. That would take America’s share of the world output down to 17.7%, the lowest in modern times. China’s would reach 18%, and rising.

Link

As the economy sputters, everyone’s looking for new ways to save on food. So, we’ve collected a whole bunch of no-budget meal ideas for those of you daring enough to scrimp.

1. Tree Bark

A classic meal of human desperation, tree bark has become a must-have meal during periods of scarcity. But you don’t have to eat it al dente the way termites and beavers do. Inhabitants of the Lapland in Finland, for example, are known to make bread with ground tree bark during cruel winter months, and several Native American groups use tree bark as a dietary supplement. In fact, the Adirondack Mountains derive their name from a derisive term for the Algonquin Indians that means “tree eaters”.

Not all bark is equally edible, so you’ll have to experiment with your neighborhood flora. Some popular favorites include aspen, birch, willow, maple, and pine -trees common in cities and forests alike. So sharpen your teeth and dig in!

How to Prepare

For the choicest strips of bark, be sure to go for the nutritious, tender inner layer known as the cambium. (Eating the outer bark would be no more pleasant than chomping into your bookshelf.) If some resin or gum oozes out as you pry off the main course, be sure to lap it up for quick energy. Here are a few fun ways to serve tree bark:

Raw. Shred finely and chew thoroughly.

Slice it into strips and boil it to make a rustic pasta. Top with sap, dandelion greens, or insect parts (see entry #2). Alternatively, you can add the noodles to a stew.

Dry and grind into flour. The ground bark is pretty versatile and can be mixed with water into a breakfast gruel, baked into bread, added to soup for extra body, or even guzzled straight like a Pixy Stick.

2. Bugs

With more than 10 quintillion of these creepy crawlies infesting the planet, bugs are a virtually limitless source of protein and flavor. Bug eating exists in nearly every culture; in fact, approximately 10 percent of the protein consumed around the world comes from bugs! There are grasshopper tacos, steamed ant eggs, and even fried tarantulas. In the United States, the FDA permits a limited number of insect parts in commercial foods, such as five fly maggots per pound of pizza sauce. While most of our big eating in this country is unintentional, it doesn’t have to be.

How to Prepare

In general, avoid brightly colored bugs, which tend to be poisonous, and always be sure to remove any shells, wings, or other textural offenses. Also, cook them before eating to kill off the inevitable parasites. Beyond that, each bug has its own qualities to consider. Here are a few of the more traditional cooking methods.

Crickets and grasshoppers: First, pluck off the barbed legs, because they can chafe your digestive tract. Then, roast the body for a snack that’s both crunchy and nutritious.

Ants: Boil for six minutes to neutralize the formic acid of the stingers. After that, inhale them by the handful.

Caterpillars: They can give you a mouthful of tiny hairs, like licking a kiwi, so bite off the heads and then squeeze the insides into a pot. Boil and serve warm.

Worms: The dirt from the insides must be removed before they can be eaten. This can be done by starving them for one day, or squeezing out the dirt by hand.

3. Leather

Transforming your wardrobe into your pantry is simple. Shoes, jackets, and biker pants make meals both fashionable and filling. In fact, in every era, leather has been enjoyed by the starving masses. Indomitable explorers, stranded pirates, famine-stricken peasants, and even emaciated prisoners have downed a shoe or two. Just two years ago, when Chinese miners in Beijing were trapped underground for nearly a week, they survived on nothing but pieces of paper and a leather belt.

How to Prepare

Before cooking, rinse and dice the (preferably undyed) leather, then pound the pieces between stones to tenderize. For a satisfying soup, you can boil the leather until relatively tender, then add seasonings such as dried worms and nettles. Leather can also be chopped up and roasted to make nutritious chips. And remember to drink plenty of water; leather’s generally as dry as a bone.

4. Dirt

No matter how bad the economy gets, there will always be enough dirt to go around. Soil can provide essential minerals. Think of it as a no-budget replacement for your expensive multivitamin supplements. In fact, dirt eating, known as geophagy, is so prevalent in some parts of the world that scientists and anthropologists think that nutritional deficits may bring on the craving. Even in the modern United States, reports persist that poor and rural Southerners still indulge in select soils by the spoonful, a custom that may have been brought over from West Africa.

How to Prepare

The secret to good dirt eating is simply to choose wisely. Soil that is rich in clay tastes the best, and it can be enhanced by adding salt and vinegar. When you find a good source, save some in a plastic bag so you can snack on it all day long. Of course, if you’re looking to enjoy the original mud pie, garnishing the meal with a few worms never hurts.

________________________________

The No-Budget Diner’s Guide was written by David Clark and appeared in the Scatterbrained section of the September-October 2009 issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted here with permission.

Don’t forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss‘ extremely entertaining website and blog today for more!

Grasshopper Blog recently conducted a survey of 200 entrepreneurs to gauge the effect of the economic recession on their businesses and their expectations for the current year. I was most interested to find that an overwhelming majority of them are optimistic about 2010 (with over 50% of them being very optimistic).

How about you?

[poll=17]

Dark Roasted Blend takes a look at artful and unusual bank notes from around the world, past and present. You thought Zimbabwe’s inflation was outrageous when they issued the 100 billion dollar notes? Now they have 100 trillion dollar notes! That kind of hyperinflation is not new, as you’ll see in this post. Link

Misery loves company, so this should make you feel as if you aren’t alone. -via the Presurfer

Digital Inspiration features a map illustrating the countires least affected by the global recession, as ranked according to a survey conducted by Servcorp for the Herald Sun.

Australia takes the top spot followed by China with India and Singapore in equal third place. Qatar is the only gulf nation that figures in this “relatively” recession-proof list.

The data is based on the results of a business confidence survey that was done on international business people of 24 nations to identify which countries they believe are surviving the crisis the best.

Link – via google

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by mrsmojorisin.

Most people have a hard time envisioning a number as big as a billion, much less a trillion. How much money is a trillion dollars? Some examples may help to put that amount in perspective.

The G-20 summit committed to $1.2 trillion in new funds, with the aim of boosting the world economy, cleaning up banks, and increasing trade, among many other things. The stimulus plan is worth more than $800 billion and the second half of the bank bailout package is at $350 billion, which make up the $1.2 trillion, but the very idea of a trillion dollars exceeds what most of our minds, let alone a standard calculator, have the capacity to understand. What does a trillion dollars look like and what else could a trillion dollars buy?

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by smellslikepurple.

If you have any spare funds left over from donating to Sarah MacLaughlin’s pet fund, here’s another worthwhile charity desperate for help.

The infusion of money may have kept credit from tightening up further, but it certainly didn’t jump-start the economy — banks didn’t resume lending to businesses and consumers. Stock prices never really recovered from their early autumn plunges, and more than half a million jobs vanished just last month. With the benefit of hindsight, lawmakers now express regret about the way the bailout was handled — with few provisions for oversight of the banks or the Bush administration — and the public hates it more than ever. The feeling that money and political capital were squandered even helped endanger the far cheaper and more popular bailout of the auto industry. So what went wrong — and where did all that money go?

A lot of it is, apparently, just sitting in the bank. A Government Accounting Office audit released earlier this month showed the Treasury Department doling out buckets of cash: $15 billion for Bank of America, $45 billion for Citigroup, $3.5 billion to Capital One, nearly $6.6 billion to U.S. Bancorp. The feds were essentially taking out the trash — buying shares in various banks that had gotten themselves into trouble by issuing crappy mortgages using complicated formulas, assuming the cost of many of the mortgage-backed securities that were weighing down the balance sheets of every financial institution in the country. The feds were pumping money into these banks so they would feel free to make more loans — better, simpler, sounder loans. The epidemic of exploding mortgages and failing institutions would ease. But the banks did not start making new loans. They seemed to sit on their federal windfalls.

Link

This is the point where I would be remiss if I didn’t point out our own T-Shirt on this subject: The $700 Billion T-Shirt

Ryan of Business Pundit blog compiled some parody corporate logos that reflect the world’s current economic crisis (The Ford/Fail logo is originally from Ironic Sans) – Link – Thanks Mu!

Previously on Neatorama:

• The Stories Behind Hollywood Studio Logos
• 10 American Financial Meltdowns in the Past Century
• Logos in the Real World

Paul Nawrocki says he’s beyond the point where he cares about humiliation.

That’s why he weekly takes a 90-minute train ride to New York, where he walks the streets wearing a sandwich board that advertises his plight: The former toy-industry executive needs a job.

"Almost homeless," reads the sign. "Looking for employment. Very experienced operations and administration manager."

Wearing a suit and tie under the sign, Nawrocki — who was in the toy industry 36 years before being laid off in February — stands on Manhattan corners for hours, hoping to pass resumes to interested passers-by.

"When you’re out of work and you face having nothing — I mean, having no income — pride doesn’t mean anything," Nawrocki said. "You need to find work. I have to take care of my family."

Link