Recession Briefing: The First Rule of Banking Is…

What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.

Recession-weary bankers are joining Fight Club-like mixed martial arts gyms. “We get a lot of finance guys,” said Max McGarr, the gym’s program director and a professional fighter. “It’s a good release from their job. If you lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, it’s good to come here and get it out.” (Bloomberg)

Health-care spending in the United States grew last year despite a contracting economy, amounting to 17.3 percent of the gross domestic product, according to estimates released Wednesday. (Washington Post)

Gifts to colleges and universities declined almost 12 percent in the 2009 fiscal year, to $27.85 billion, according to the Council for Aid to Education’s annual survey of voluntary support of education. It was the steepest decline in the survey’s 53-year history. (New York Times)…

Recession Briefing: Economist Blames Foreigners for Financial Meltdown

What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.

NBC’s late night fiasco has become the perfect allegory for the Great Recession. And just as with the financial meltdown, it looks like this fiasco will end with the same corporate screw-ups still in their jobs, no real change, and everything back to more or less where it was when the whole thing started. (New York/Daily Intel)

Bank robberies plunged nearly 20% last year to their lowest point in at least a decade even as Americans grappled with a deep recession and widespread unemployment. (USA Today)

Much of the fault of the financial crisis has been heaped on Wall Streeters, unscrupulous mortgage lenders and weak regulators. But in a new research paper, economist Ricardo Caballero says there is another major group of contributors to America’s monetary mess who are not getting the blame they deserve: foreigners. (Time)…

Media Just Wants to Be Free

You’ve slashed your entertainment budget to the bone. No more Friday night movies for you and you’re cutting off the digital cable. But you still need your Mad Men fix and you don’t want to miss the next Batman blockbuster. Thanks to the abundance of the Internet, you can scrap that entertainment budget altogether and go all-free-all-the-time. We’ve rounded up several sources that will keep your media habits intact without burning a hole in your wallet.

TV & Movies

Hulu.com – Why it’s great: New shows, old shows, 144 movies and trailers. The hitch: The new shows expire and the movies are cut with ads.

YouTube.com – Now home to more than just viral videos of six-year-olds talking about Darth Vader, YouTube has a movies and a television section from “old media.”

Freemooviesonline.com – If you’re a fan of the good, the bad and the extra-cheesy this website is for you. Uninterrupted streaming video of all the rubber-suited monsters and spaghetti westerns you could want.

Guba.com – This site has a good selection of streaming movies, especially anime and foreign films of the Asian persuasion. However, like most of the Internet, this site is 90% porn by volume…