Given the recent turmoil in markets both international and domestic, it seems like a good time to look back at our city's history for tips on how to handle a stock market crash. One story goes that, following the harrowing experience of trading shares on Black Tuesday in 1929, a Toronto investor arrived home with news for his wife. He told her that due to the heavy losses he incurred that day he resigned from six of the seven clubs to which they belonged, sold their second car, advertised that their garage was for rent, and cancelled nearly all of their charge accounts. He promptly fired the maid and went to sleep. As Doug Fetherling asked at the end of this tale in his book Gold Diggers of 1929, “What else was a gentleman to do?”

Reading about world economies is important, but it can also be dry and boring, which is why the latest Big Mac Index, published by the Economist, caught our eye. The annual Index, which measures “purchasing power parities” around the world, has been around since 1986, but UBS Wealth Management Research has helped shape the more [...]

Source: Upper Yonge Villager, July 16, 1982 Most ads for restaurants tout the eatery’s virtues (smart decor, well-prepared food) or highlight special offers. Less common, unless the restaurant has bought ongoing advertorial space, are spots where the owner takes a stance on burning issues of the day. Ads for Oliver’s in community papers usually highlighted [...]

On the lighter side of economics, the Boston Globe—via Marginal Revolution—highlights a new study arguing that winning sports teams actually increase the incomes of local residents and workers. It’s been long established that the fans’ investment in sports teams—emotions rising and falling on every goal, streak, or fleeting playoff run—pays dividends in positive psychological effects. [...]

Photo by Carnotzet from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. North American cities are undergoing a massive change. And it’s not just gentrification, Alan Ehrenhalt writes in The New Republic, it’s a wholesale “demographic inversion.” In Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, and elsewhere, the poor, minorities, and immigrants are being pushed to the outskirts while the affluent—and, in this [...]