The Finance Blog

Something strange happened this week in Amazon.com's apparel section.

For a day or two, a black T-shirt featuring an image of three wolves baying at a full moon claimed the top slot at the online store's clothing bestseller list,, beating out the usual, unremarkable mix of Levi's 505 regular-fit jeans, Crocs clogs and Adidas running shoes.

Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt, Available in Various Sizes

And really, why wouldn't you buy the shirt, which is priced from $7.65 to $17.93, depending on your size? Just read the long and growing list of customer testimonials promising earth-shattering experiences or psychedelic vision quests upon purchase.

"I bought this shirt and instantly old girlfriends started calling me again," wrote one reviewer."My doctor says the cancer has gone into remission," wrote another. "

Thanks for changing my life!"The shirt's page at Amazon.com had quietly existed for years without much comment, but after a snarky link from CollegeHumor.com, the "Three Wolf Moon" shirt suddenly sprouted hundreds of five-star ratings.

Reviewers have dreamed up epics about its powers, weaving fantasies involving everything from the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland to the pop group Duran Duran.

As the joke caught on and got passed around the Web, Photoshopped spoofs of the shirt started appearing online -- featuring corgi puppies, spiders or haddock instead of the now-famous wolves.

CollegeHumor.com, a comedy site started in 1999 by a couple of high school friends who grew up together in Timonium, Md., also claimed victory this week for rigging an online poll run by the state of Nebraska to select a new license-plate design.

The site urged its readers to vote for what it deemed the most boring design available to Nebraska drivers. That gray-and-white plate won.Officials in Nebraska said they monitored Web traffic to screen out visitors coming directly from the humor site, but CollegeHumor.com was still, credibly, claiming the joke a success this week.

"Together we pranked the entire automobile-owning population of Nebraska," wrote a CollegeHumor.com editor, in a Wednesday posting. "Congratulations."

This type of online rabble-rousing appears to be catching on more than ever over the past year, said Tim Hwang, the organizer of ROFLCon, a convention dedicated to celebrating Internet memes.

After all, another Web-based prank crossed over into the real world just last month when a 21-year-old college student, known by the online moniker "m00t," sailed to the top of Time's "most influential person" list in an online poll, beating out the likes of President Obama and Oprah Winfrey.

Gathering nearly 17 million votes, the world's "most influential" person is the founder of another jokey Web culture site, 4chan.org, whose proprietor is known offline by the name Christopher Poole. If you don't get why the shirt, and its reviews, are so funny, don't worry.

CollegeHumor.com co-founder Josh Abramson said it's a case where the shirt is so uncool that it's cool."A lot of things that become popular on the Web are based around just being ironic and being an inside joke," Abramson said.

"This resonates with a geeky, hip crowd that is very Web-savvy. When something resonates with that circle, crazy things can happen."Abramson said his team had considered licensing the wolf shirt for sale.

CollegeHumor.com, which had 7 million unique Web visitors last month, also has an online store that sells T-shirts with ironic catchphrases and designs, called BustedTees.com. But it appears that the site may have been a bit slow to catch on to its own meme.

"We're kicking ourselves that we didn't," he said.The New Hampshire company that makes the "Three Wolf Moon" shirt said that it doesn't generally mind being the butt of this joke."You have to be able to laugh at yourself," said Michael McGloin, a partner and art director at the Mountain, who added that he finds some of the reviews to be "freaking hilarious."

The company certainly doesn't mind the shirt's recent uptick in sales: "Three Wolf Moon" is sold out, and the Mountain has started printing up a fresh batch.

It seems that the wolf theme was growing in popularity even before the Internet hipsters descended, McGloin said."Wolf shirts are super hot right now," he said. "It's the year of the wolf, I guess."

Click now to Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt, Available in Various Sizes

By Mike Musgrove, Washington Post Staff Writer

Labels: finance course online, ironic tshirt, the mountain, three wolf moon, tshirt, wolf moon, wolf shirt, wolf t-shirt

WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve's decision last month to plow $1.2 trillion into the economy reflected growing concerns about a vicious economic cycle in which rising unemployment will curtail consumer spending, potentially into 2010.

Documents released Wednesday provided insights into the Fed's decision to revive the economy by buying long-term government debt and boosting purchases of mortgage-backed securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Projections for economic activity in the second half of 2009 and in 2010 "were revised down" by the Fed's staff, who did not provide updated forecasts.

"Most participants viewed downside risks as predominating in the near term," according to minutes of the Fed's closed-door meeting on March 17-18.

And with the economy likely to stay fragile, the unemployment rate - now at a quarter-century high of 8.5 percent - will probably "rise more steeply into early next year before flattening out at a high level over the rest of the year," the minutes said.

The bleak outlook stems mainly from a cycle where rising joblessness prompted cutbacks by consumers, which in turn led to more layoffs and reduced production by businesses. Such forces would weaken the economy even more, triggering further credit tightening and additional losses at financial institutions, the Fed explained.

Against that backdrop, the central bank decided to hold its key lending rate at a record low of between zero and 0.25 percent. Economists predict the Fed will hold the rate in that zone for the rest of this year and for most - if not all of - next year.

In addition, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues turned to other unconventional tools to revive the economy. The Fed said it would spend up to $300 billion to buy long-term government bonds and would buy an additional $750 billion in Fannie and Freddie securities.

The economy had deteriorated more than Fed policymakers expected from their previous meeting in January. Of particular concern was the sharp drop in demand overseas, which was hurting sales of U.S. exports, the Fed said. That meant exports wouldn't likely be a source of support for economic activity in the near term.

The Fed minutes said that gross domestic product was "expected to flatten out gradually over the second half of this year and then to expand slowly next year as the stresses of the financial markets ease, the effects of fiscal stimulus take hold, inventory adjustments are worked through and the correction in housing activity comes to and end."

GDP measures the value of all goods and services produced within the U.S. and is the broadest measure of the country's economic health. It contracted at a 6.3 percent pace in the final quarter of last year, the worst showing in a quarter-century. Many economists expect the economy performed nearly as poorly in the first three months of this year.

The government will release its estimate of first-quarter GDP later this month. Many analysts believe the economy is shrinking in the current quarter, but probably not as much as in the fourth quarter.

Still, Fed policymakers believed that policies in place would eventually lead to an economic recovery, although an exact time table wasn't offered. President Barack Obama's $787 billion package of increased government spending and tax cuts, along with the administration's bank-rescue efforts and a program to reduce home foreclosures will provide some level of relief.

However, Fed officials expressed "a variety of views about the strength and the timing of the recovery."

Some believed the "natural resilience of market forces" would become evident later this year. Others saw a recovery as "delayed and potentially weak" because consumers would stay very cautious.

The Fed's decision to launch the $1.2 trillion program was viewed as helping to address "the very weak economic outlook" and thwart the prospect of deflation, a dangerous bout of falling prices. The Fed spoke the need to "reduce the risk that inflation could persist for a time below rates that best foster longer-term economic growth and price stability."

Some Fed officials talked about some challenges faced by a program, created by the Fed and the Treasury Department, aimed at jump-starting loans to consumers and small businesses.

The program - called the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility - which launched last month, has gotten off to a slow start.

Some investors were worried about "potential future changes in government policies" as a reason for investor hesitation, the minutes said. The Fed on Tuesday said just $1.7 billion in loans were requested for the second-round of funding in April. That was down from $4.7 billion requested in the first operation last month.

By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer

Labels: feds, finance course online, tarp, Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility