It's still up in the air whether the worst of the financial crisis has passed. In the here and now, the undeniable--and more immediate--question is over how to strengthen the lax financial regulations that toppled the first domino.

Economists say when recovery eventually comes, the resulting growth will likely be a product of a new regulatory structure devised by the world's governments. But the world's a big place. Government leaders may generally agree on a broad global framework of investing and trade restrictions, but getting each national government to play ball in actually setting and enforcing the regulations makes for tricky business.

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Our Beijing bureau chief, Melinda Liu, is in town and mentioned to me yesterday that the Chinese authorities are cracking down on "virtual" currencies. What's a virtual currency, you ask? In online multiplayer games like World of Warcraft, players collect loot in order to buy weapons and armor for their characters, and to advance through the game. For many, this is a very, very serious pastttime -- as evidenced by this teen's reaction when his mother canceled his WoW account.

Some players are so serious, in fact, that they'll pay real-life cash for the virtual gold. When clever entrepreneurs figured this out, they started hiring people to work in "virtual sweatshops," playing WoW and similar games for hours at a time, collecting loot to later sell on virtual currency exchanges. This has started to worry Chinese officials, says The New York Times:

The coin of fantasy realms have already moved markets here. So-called QQ coins — a form of currency produced by the Chinese Internet giant Tencent — have sometimes risen sharply in value against China’s official currency, the renminbi, alarming officials at the nation’s Central Bank.

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For years, American educators have been touting the rise of the "knowledge economy" and shifting focus away from the manual trades, encouraging teens onto the four-year college track in preparation for our supposedly postindustrial society. Meanwhile, cubicle jobs are increasingly going the route of manufacturing work as corporations outsource any task that can be delivered over a wireless connection. And thanks to the financial crisis, that drain is only likely to accelerate. So perhaps it's time to reconsider where the future of work is headed as the century unfolds. It's a subject that's starting to gain traction, first in the writings of Princeton economist Alan Blinder and most recently in a clever book called Shop Class as Soulcraft, by philosopher (and motorcycle repairman) Matthew Crawford.

The Idea: American elites tend to harbor ambivalent feelings about manual labor and the blue-collar trades, which are increasingly identified as jobs of the past, only suitable for low-skilled or immigrant laborers. However, manual trades (construction, repair, and maintenance) are among the few jobs that have proved resilient to global outsourcing. Moreover, as Crawford argues, working with one's hands can potentially be more lucrative and intellectually satisfying than being a low-level cubicle worker.  

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