April Fools Day Round-up
There’s nothing I like better than a good satirical hoax. And today is the best day of the year for it, when blogs and news outlets do their best to provide gentle criticism of the state of things by (briefly) fooling their readers into believing something incredible.
Free Money Finance had a clever post about how it had been sold for “almost seven figures.”
My Dollar Plan announced that it was for sale. It did not give an asking price.
Weakonomics had a post revealing the author’s secret identity. He had me going until he claimed a passion for organic farming. I bet he doesn’t even shop at Whole Foods.
Cash Money Life had a poignant post about a government announcement that pennies would no longer be minted. Sadly, this is actually a good idea, which is why it didn’t work that well as a hoax.
Mighty Bargain Hunter had an absolutely hysterical (and ridiculous) post about a bill in Congress to reduce the Federal debt.
Not be outdone by the blogosphere, the Wall Street Journal carried a brilliant story about how congressmen and senators gave record bonuses to their staff last year. According to the report, “The money comes out of taxpayer-funded office budgets, and is surplus cash that would otherwise be forfeited if not spent.” As if!
On the other hand, I think the Times went too far with its story about pleasure boats being abandoned by their cash-strapped owners. C’mon guys, that’s just not believable. But kudos on the almost convincing fake photo.
Government | Frank Curmudgeon | 
April 1, 2009 1:46 pm
No Comments
Other Links to this Post
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Subscribe
By the weakonomist, April 1, 2009 @ 3:53 pm
Hey now! I like whole foods, but deep down I’m a Fresh Market kind of guy. Great roundup.
By Nikc, April 1, 2009 @ 5:17 pm
Don’t forget Ramit’s of I Will Teach You To Be Rich’s new program!
http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/announcing-the-new-i-will-teach-you-to-be-frugal/
By Sarah, April 2, 2009 @ 9:17 am
I thought this was a good one too… http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/04/01/pm_new_staging/
By Frank Curmudgeon, April 2, 2009 @ 10:40 am
The Marketplace bit was very clever, but NPR’s all things considered almost caused me to have a traffic accident:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102618951&ps=cprs
Generally speaking, listening to NPR increases safety, because I am too busy yelling at the radio to yell at other drivers.