Every morning, after reading my good old newspapers, I head to the computer and make my rounds, checking out the money news -related web sites to see what everyone’s talking about.

Without fail, I visit the New York Times and WSJ. Then I’ll head to Portfolio, Yahoo Finance, MSN Money and CNN Money. And depending on how much time I have, I’ll browse headlines at Slate, Thestreet.com, The Consumerist, Bloomberg and the public radio program Marketplace.

But this weekend I came across a new one for me from the makers of Slate. The Big Money, a site that launched in Sept to bring you the skinny “on all important aspects of economics and money without getting bogged down in arcane statistics or impenetrable jargon.”

There’s another site I’ve been frequenting recently for money news and that’s NPR’s Planet Money blog and podcast.

Where do you go for your money news and stories related to the economy that make you think?

My colleague Tom Horgen and I must be on the same wavelength. I started this post on Friday. This weekend he had a story on where to find “The New Deals” (get it?) on entertainment.

Here are two that aren’t mentioned in his story.

The Guthrie is bringing back its excellent food and play deal — “Beer, Burgers and the Bard” –for The Two Gentleman of Verona.  $30 bucks gets you a Summit, sliders and a ticket to the play. I took advantage of this deal to see the Government Inspector and I admit that my favorite part of the night was sitting outside on the patio outside Cue with a cold beer and about the best brat I’ve ever had.

Looks like the first night sold out already so they’re offering the deal again on St. Patty’s day (better make that free pint a Guinness).

Ka-Blog reader Nancy brought the next deal to my attention. You and a friend can eat free food, drink free wine, and hang out at The Bakken Museum for $7 next Tuesday? That’s for 2 of you! There’s a DJ too. Here’s the scoop.

Don’t keep the good deals to yourself. Share, share, share!

I interviewed St. Paul native Dave Kansas about his new book “The Wall Street Journal Guide to The End of Wall Street As We Know It.” I couldn’t fit all of the nuggets into my column so here’s the rest of the interview:

Q: Who would you say the book is written for?
A: It’s for the vast majority of people out there who know we’re in a financial crisis but don’t really understand how or why we’re in that crisis. I think a lot about my family. They’re not steeped in financial news, but they’re incredibly curious about all the stuff that’s happening and how it came to be like this. So I was trying to write for people who just wanted to figure out “What the heck happened?” in a way that would be accessible, so they would be better equipped to sort out what they ought to do.

Q: You were just in the Twin Cities. Describe how is the mood in New York different from the mood here?
A: The mood in New York is much grimmer as it relates to the economy than it was in the Twin Cities. And I think that’s because the because the New York economy is so tightly tied to what happens on Wall Street. And there’s been so much damage, carnage and job loss on Wall Street that people can’t help but think about it. Things are more diverse in the Twin Cities. There is a large financial community there, of course, but it’s less a big money hub as it is in Manhattan, which is why the Bernard Madoff story was surprising as it related to the Twin Cities.

Q: Can you talk about the challenge of writing a book on a topic where news breaks daily?
A: It’s just like writing a magazine story with longer lead time. My last chance to really look at it was in mid-December. You need to kind of focus on the bigger trends in place and become a little less detailed oriented. That worked in terms of writing about the automakers and Citigroup. It didn’t work so well in terms of mentioning now-departed John Thain of Merrill Lynch or Bank of America.

Q: Would you say you’ve changed how you’re managing your money in the past few months?
A: I have not changed much, but I toyed with taking cash I had available and investing it in the stock market back in September and I thought about it again in December and I thought about it again this month. For me and for other people, what’s important is the ability to sleep well at night and not about getting into the market at a perfect time.

Q: In the book, you mention a return to thrift. Do you think that will be by choice or by force, because credit has dried up and income is down?
A: I think it’s mostly happening by choice. Even with the unemployment rate the way it is, 80 to 90 percent of the workforce probably hasn’t seen much change in their material situation. But people know enough people who are being forced into a change and the headlines are such that people can’t help but notice that things are different. I hear stories about people all the time whose financial situations haven’t changed at all who are eating at home instead of eating out, who are taking the bus instead of taking a cab, or bringing a sack lunch to work instead of ordering in Chinese food, not buying the season tickets, just buying a couple of tickets. The psychology around money has really changed for a lot of people. I’m traveling less, eating at home a lot more, trying to figure out ways to save money here and there.

Q: Do you think the shift towards thrift will be permanent?
A: No, nothing is permanent. But we went through a process like this in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the wake of the “Greed is good” decade. There was a kind of a moving away from ostentatious displays of wealth and we’re seeing a similar thing now. President Barack Obama spoke of an era of responsibility and I think a lot of people are embracing that.

Q: Any rays of hope in this economy?
A: I think the new administration has a smart economic team and I think that they’re going to work hard to help solve the problems we have. Also, we sometimes lose sight of how vast and complicated the U.S. economy is and that there’s a lot of creativity and a lot of small business activity that flies under the radar screen that’s going to be the source of a rebound. The other important thing is historical context. We haven’t had a rough recession in almost 30 years, but we got through that one too. We can’t lose track of the fact that the economic cycle comes back, even if it gets bad before that happens. I think we’re going to start to see that within a year.

My house is consumed by the crud and I feel like I’m next. But I’m feeling guilty about the lack of Ka-blogging and had been saving this item for a day just like this one.

An array of products and downright odd pitches related to the economic downturn have been landing on my desk.

For those of you feeling miffed about more stimulus, squeeze the banker! I wonder if a Geithner doll is in the works?

If you’re looking for a more substantial financial fix, head over to my old haunt– Minnesota Public Radio’s Midday program for former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich’s economic outlook. I heard pieces of it while I was in and out of the car and I wish I’d heard it all.

Yale prof, author of “Irrational Exuberance,” and co-creator of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index Robert Shiller had an opinion piece in the New York Times that I just got around to reading. He thinks the government should spend $15 billion on subsidized financial advice for the masses.

Here’s an exerpt:

SUBSIDIZED financial advisers should be licensed by self-regulatory organizations that verify their qualifications. Licensing will be imperfect, and some incompetent advisers will end up with subsidies. Still, the net effect of getting professional advice to the public is surely positive.

To qualify for a subsidy, the advisers would have to sign a statement promising loyalty to their clients and agreeing to accept only the subsidized hourly fee, and never any commissions or kickbacks. The subsidies might come to $75 an hour, at a very rough estimate, and if 50 million Americans averaged four hours of consultations, the eventual cost might be $15 billion a year — a substantial expenditure, but a worthwhile one.

If personal financial advisers had been subsidized years ago with the best incentives, they still might not have stopped their clients’ bubble thinking during the boom. Many advisers probably thought that housing investments were a good bet. But it’s still likely that advisers who built long-term relationships with their clients, and who pledged to look after their welfare, would have been a helpful influence, suggesting caution to those who were getting over their heads in debt, and warning that adjustable-rate mortgages could be reset upward, just as the fine print said. For these reasons, financial advisers probably would have reduced the severity of the housing bubble.

Professional financial advice is now generally accessible only by the relatively wealthy. Changing this would be an important corrective step. Giving the general public access to trained advisers would be a boon for the nation in this time of doubt and distrust.

Given how much we’re spending on other things these days, what’s $15 billion to educate the public on money matters?  Think it would be $15 billion well spent?