Museums aren’t just casualties of the current economic collapse, they actively fed the boom and subsequent bust, Ben Davis writes for ArtNet. Museum boards engaged in short-sited speculation, gambling huge endowments in hedge funds and other risky investments.

Now that those endowments are worth a fraction of what they once were, and with governments drastically cutting their support for the arts to stave off budget crises, the large institutions aren’t the ones hurt most.  “Everyone knows who is getting hardest hit,” Davis writes, “it is the personnel who do the unglamorous day-to-day stuff that makes these places run.”

Source: ArtNet 

Image by gomattolson, licensed under Creative Commons.

“How is it that we have so many people of energy, ideas, creativity and intelligence in the arts, and yet they haven’t even begun to generate enough money to support what they do?” asks Toner Quinn, editor of the recently launched, internationally minded Journal of Music. Good question.

Quinn has a plan, and it begins with blowing up our assumptions about “the economics of the arts.” We praise arts organizations for doing amazing things on shoestring budgets, he writes, and when there’s extra money to go around, it generally goes toward improving compensation for undercompensated people. Fair enough. Quinn notes, however, that arts organizations and artists often operate in bubbles, struggling to meet their economic needs without tapping into collective economic experience.

“Conventional thinking on the relationship between the arts and business is that it inevitably leads to compromise for the former,” Quinn writes. “Arts communities, however, have many successful people who manage to outwit that, striking a balance between business acumen and cultural concern, between artistic ambition and financial prudence, between the language of cultural entrepreneurialism and the language of commercial business….

“What they know cannot be found in books; and it won’t be issued as a memo by any commercial business. It is only learned through having formative experiences in the arts.”

Quinn proposes that arts councils rustle up their experts in the business side of the arts and offer their advice to newcomers. Extending the concept to art galleries, theater companies, publishing groups, and the like would eventually produce a system of economic mentorship. In addition to reducing missed opportunities and generating more money all around, such an insitutution would also strengthen the fabric of arts communities. Good idea, I’d say.

Source: The Journal of Music

How much does it cost to spread 650,000 pennies on the floor in a delicate wave pattern, atop a bed of oozing honey? Including the tableau attendant and accommodations for the sheep, about $13,791.36. (1989 dollars, of course.) The installation in question is Anne Hamilton’s “privations and excess,” which The Believer details in the latest installment of Creative Accounting, a series that’s plainly perfect for those among us who love both the arts and getting down and gritty with the details. Ahem.

In past issues, the magazine has unpacked the fiscal details of an unnamed Flaming Lips album ($158,338.53); a modestly-made indie film ($15,4800), and a less-modestly made yet nonetheless indie film ($18 million), which kicked off the series last March.

 Source: The Believer 

Image by kevindooley, licensed under Creative Commons.

With the economy sliding down the tubes, corporate spinmeisters are struggling to come up with new ways to talk about financial woes. Here are a few great linguistic innovations that have come out of the recession so far:

“A retention award” (executive bonus for a government bailed-out bank, via the Huffington Post.)

“Public capital facilitation” (bank nationalization, via the Economist.)

“streamlining and simplification” (Ebay’s layoffs, via Gawker.)

“synergy-related headcount adjustment goal” (Nokia’s layoffs, via Dollars & Sense.)

Sources: Huffington Post, Economist, Gawker, Dollars & Sense 

Even in the midst of the current economic crisis, few would contest the fact that humans live amidst an abundance of wealth and resources. There is plenty of food in the world, yet people continue to die of hunger every day. There is plenty of money in the world, yet people beg in the streets. The problem isn’t poverty, according to the new film The End of Poverty, directed by Philippe Diaz, the problem is wealth. 

According to the film, the global poor, especially those in the Southern Hemisphere, have been funding the wealth and greed of the global rich, concentrated mostly in the North. The film sketches out various strategies the rich have used throughout history—from colonization, to religion, to the neoliberal policies of the past few decades—which are designed, according to the films subjects, to subjugate the poor to the will of the rich. 

In this reading of history, the capitalist system is a continuation of the slave trade and the global system of subjugation that began under the Spanish Conquistadors. Moving forward, the world must reject “the religion of growth” to create a more equitable global economic system. But one of the film’s experts, William Easterly, seems to belie that reading of history in a recent article for Foreign Policy magazine.

In the past 50 years, the global economic system created “the greatest mass escape from poverty in human history,” according to Easterly. The problem is that governments, in the midst of the current economic crisis, are in danger of rejecting that system in favor of more protectionist economic strategies.

Image by  Amir Farshad Ebrahimi , licensed under  Creative Commons .

Here is the trailer for The End of Poverty:

A new study out of the University of California in Berkeley has good news for the economy and the environment: Between 1972 and 2006, energy efficiency measures undertaken in California have been a boon to the state’s economy, creating approximately 1.5 million jobs and saving consumers $56 billion. “We find, I think demonstrably, that energy efficiency is good for the economy and good for jobs,” study author David Roland-Holst told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Unfortunately, while energy efficiency may be good for the economy, the economy isn’t doing such good things for green energy, according to Grist. They report that “renewable-energy stocks around the world have dropped some 45 percent in the past three months,” due to tightening credit lines and dwindling demand for alternative energy as oil prices fall.

World economic prospects were looking dire even before Monday’s bailout bill failed to pass Congress, sending stock markets plummeting and nearly everyone into a panic. A “more palatable” version of the bailout bill might eventually be approved, but it’s safe to say that things are going to get worse before they get better, and no one’s quite sure of the long-term effects of our economic crisis.

Eco blogs are beginning to speculate and offer commentary about the situation’s impact on environmental politics, and Gristmill is leading the analysis. Joseph Romm debunks the suggestion that Barack Obama would put funds for the bailout bill ahead of his clean energy plan. David Roberts explains how more energy efficient homes would raise housing stock while lowering the cost of utilities—the unstable housing market being the catalyst, of course, for the current financial crisis. And Kate Shepherd hopes the bailout won’t push Congress’ renewable energy tax-credit bill off the table.

But EcoGeek Hank Green laments that the bailout legislation has already killed carefully crafted solar legislation. “These people simply do not understand. The bailout is about preventing disaster,” Green writes. “But what about planning for an America that can see beyond damage control to growth and prosperity?”

A more optimistic—if long-term—outlook comes from Angelique van Engelen at Triple Pundit, who predicts that the next bull market, when and if it arrives, will be heavily influenced by green investing. “Admittedly, it's a bit obscene to talk of a new bull market now that Wall Street is heavily sick and in need of a trillion-dollar bailout,” she writes. “But perhaps it makes sense to do it anyway because it's very likely that the next bull's going to be colored brightly green.”

Image by Shiny Things, licensed by Creative Commons.

Set down that copy of Moby Dick, and grab your bank statement. Colleges and universities are increasingly focused on arming students with a “new” kind of literacy: the financial variety. As education costs balloon and student debt rises, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education, more and more institutions are following the lead of Texas Tech University, which established a financial literacy program eight years ago.

From the basics of budgeting to the principles of managing debt, there’s a lot of heartache that could be prevented if financial literacy were made as central to education as regular old book-lovin’ literacy. The Chronicle cites a recent survey by the nonprofit Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy that found that fewer than half of high school seniors were aware that credit card companies assess charges if cardholders pay only the minimum balance due. Eesh.

Perhaps from personal financial literacy, greater economic literacy will blossom. To get a head start, brush up, or dig into the front-page headlines of late, check out our online feature: Econ 101: A Crash Course of Economics Blogs.

Image by kevindooley, licensed under Creative Commons.

We all have different definitions of financial security and wealth, but some are more realistic than others. When asked to define a “rich” income level at the Saddleback Forum this past weekend, the responses from Barack Obama and John McCain were revealing. Obama said $150,000, while McCain posited, “How about $5 million?” He was ostensibly joking, but his response is the perfect example of sincerity cloaked in fatuousness, and completely in line with his party’s economic philosophy.

Ezra Klein, at the American Prospect, made a chart to contextualize the candidates’ definitions of wealth:

Klein concludes that McCain’s “profoundly out of touch” answer, facetious or not, is frustrating but inevitable: He's been richer, for longer, than Obama and most of his fellow Americans. “Nothing weird or malign: Just the naturally skewed perspective of someone who lives on a particular extreme, in this case, the extreme edge of the wealth distribution.” Obama is, by his own definition, undeniably wealthy, but Klein argues that because his family’s acquisition of wealth is relatively recent, Obama’s outlook is more realistic.

McCain and his companions in the richest slice of America’s population have no concept of what it is to barely get by on a middle-class income, much less at or below the unrealistically low poverty line. While statistically unsurprising, this warped economic outlook will have dire consequences for the middle and lower classes if McCain becomes president, all but ensuring an extension of the Bush Administration’s apparent mandate that the rich get richer at the expense of pretty much everyone else.

Chart courtesy of Ezra Klein.

Everyone seems to be watching the economy a little more closely, whether they're most concerned about the foreclosure crisis, credit card debt, or paying for college. Media coverage often misses the boat on these complex issues, but lively economics blogs have stepped in to fill the void, delving into politics and media criticism while deciphering the latest research. Here are a few to get you started:

Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, criticizes and clarifies the media’s economic coverage at the American Prospect's Beat the Press blog. 

Brad DeLong, a professor at the University of California–Berkeley, writes Grasping Reality with Both Hands, where he frequently corrects errors in economic and political reporting under the not-so-subtle heading “[Publication Name] Death Spiral Watch."

Marginal Revolution , an oft-updated site maintained by George Mason University economics professors Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, appears on DeLong's helpful list of recommended econ blogs. Last week, Tabarrok posted an in-depth critique of the latest "math wars" study that questioned the existence of a math ability gap between boys and girls, attracting dozens of responses about sexism and former Harvard President Larry Summers' 2005 imbroglio over sex and scientific ability.

Another pair of George Mason economists, Donald Boudreaux and Russell Roberts, author the more conservative Cafe Hayek, which can be refreshing in challenging such conventional wisdom as the evils of Wal-Mart or off-shore drilling. 

At The Fly Bottle, Cato Institute research fellow Will Wilkinson offers a center-right view of economics, from critiquing global-warming alarmism to questioning the benefit of the minimum-wage hike. 

Dani Rodrik is a Harvard professor who blogs (infrequently, but quite readably) about globalization and economic development. For a more regular feed, Rodrik recommends Yale political scientist Chris Blattman's economic development blog.

Image by genericface, licensed under Creative Commons.

The kernel at the core of every conventional economic model is alluringly simple: Growth is good. But due in large part to our planet’s finite resources, this premise is fundamentally flawed, the April issue of the Ecologist points out in an enlightening group of stories dubbed “The Earth vs. the Economy” (articles not available online) that call into question everything we’ve been taught about goods and services, supply and demand.

“When Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, life was hard, the world vast and the supply depot of nature seemed without limit. . . . How could goods lead to anything but good?” writes Jonathan Rowe in the leadoff article, “The End of Economics.”

“More than two centuries later, that assumption no longer works. . . . The connection between wealth and weal, goods and good, has become increasingly frayed,” he posits. Rowe goes on to construct a withering critique of prevailing economic thought and describe the “epidemic of market-related disease” that is sickening both humans and the planet.

In subsequent articles, ecological economist Herman E. Daly puts forth the framework of a new economic model, and Andrew Simms points out that the current British recession (sound familiar?) may present “a good time for a rethink” of old assumptions. Simms reminds us that such thinking isn’t entirely new, or even all that radical: Forty years ago, he notes, Robert Kennedy famously pointed out that the GNP measures everything “except that which makes life worthwhile.”

—Keith Goetzman