Life is hard. Making money is hard. Being on your own is hard. Recently, these messages have been ingrained into our brains from every media outlet and from all our friends that suddenly decided to forgo a financial career and take a stab at the LSATs. Therefore, it is difficult to sit through another movie that reiterates how depressing life can be without monetary resources. No wonder people willingly gravitated towards the dazzling, though excessively impractical, Slumdog Millionaire this past year for a fantastical escape.

Spring Break is here and downtown at HEROES & VILLAINS, we’re ready for the HEROIC wet t-shirt contests, drinking games and dances with the devil on exotic beaches far, far away from the VILLAINOUS Ithaca cold. But, wait, what’s that we hear about VILLAINOUS violence and political turmoil in Mexico? Looks like those Bloody Marys may not actually be made of tomato juice ...

We’re ready to put H&V to bed for a week, but first we have a few last issues to duke out.

NEW YORK (AP) — Investors have been clamoring for months for a bit of good news. Yesterday, they got a load of it.

The Dow Jones industrials shot up 240 points, bringing its gains from the past few days to 622 points. It was the index's biggest three-day jump since last November.

This week's rally got an extra dose of adrenaline after an accounting board told Congress Thursday it may recommend a let-up in financial reporting rules for troubled banks in three weeks. Upheaval in the banking industry has been dogging the market since 2007, and hope that banks might finally get relief in how they value their bad assets spurred a flurry of buying.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Confronting misgivings in his own party, President Barack Obama mounted a stout defense of his blueprint to overhaul the national economy yesterday, arguing that delay on health care, energy and education would make "recovery more fragile and our future less secure."

The president's wide-ranging proposals in the midst of economic crisis faced skepticism from both Democrats and Republicans, as senators questioned his long-term budget outlook and the deficits it envisions in the middle of the next decade.

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), the chairman of the Budget Committee called the track of future deficits "unsustainable" and singled out Obama's proposal for spending $634 billion on health care over the next 10 years.

For all the havoc that it has inspired, the recent economic crisis has engendered at least one positive development: humanities majors and like-minded literati have been able to make full use of the word schadenfreude. The German term, defined by the OED as “malicious enjoyment of the misfortunes of others,” has been so frequently invoked in recent months that The New York Times’ deputy news editor was forced to advise writers to lay off of it. But overuse is to be expected — these days, intellectuals have few occasions to rejoice.

This financial collapse never had to happen, if we had properly regulated the mortgage market. And the ideological opposition that bankers had to regulation was obviously short cited; if we had, everyone—including the bankers—would have been better off. This is how ...

John McCain was right about something — he predicted that the economy was “about to crater,” and crater it did. The aggregate effect of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the credit crunch had the magnitude of a meteorite and caused financial havoc unseen since the Great Depression. Perhaps that is why many of America’s landmark industries are going the way of the dinosaurs.

Layoffs and a complete lack of confidence in Wall Street have decimated the savings and spending power of middle class Americans. Industry in turn has suffered, and the Big Three American automakers have been held up as the archetype of the failing and unprofitable American business model.

There I sat contemplating the news — “Mr. Charles will call you at 9:30 a.m. for your phone interview.” I had never had a formal job interview, yet alone a long distance one over the telephone. There was some upside to not having to interview face-to-face I figured; I had time to plan out exactly how I wanted everything to go. Would I dress up in a suit to put myself in the interview mind set? Would I be more comfortable and relaxed if I did the interview au naturale? What questions could I possibly be asked? How would I respond? After jotting down some brief notes, and after deciding that regular clothing would suffice, I was seemingly ready for the interview.