A couple of comments on old posts popped up in the last week. They look like ads going for link placement, but they look like real people wrote them, and two of them were from the same person on quite different topics.

So, users mgins and bothwell, I've published your comments, but I've removed the links, figuring that's an appropriate punishment.

The comments in question are 1, 2, and

For snarky, mildly academic news commentary on the long finance meltdown the country is in the middle of, my reading of choice is Salon's How the World Works. Combine that with a Salon feature today on oil prices, and you start getting to immediate questions for my profession:

The bottom line: Oil prices are high today, not due to a temporary disruption in the global flow of petroleum as in 1980, but for systemic reasons that are, if anything, becoming more pronounced. This means news headlines with the phrase "record oil price" are likely to be commonplace for a long time to come. ...