Who knew that trekking to a concentration advising event with promises of free advice and Noch's pizza would also key us into the latest gossip in the Econ department?

For the 220 Econ concentrators absent from the event, you're in luck. We ate your pizza, but here are some juicy tidbits instead.

• The Obama administration is snatching up the best and brightest of our Econ professors left and right, and the University's powers-that-be have whittled the department's faculty hires down to one, the loneliest number. Rumor has it that the position for an assistant professor has been offered to a male Economics hot shot who recently gave a talk on campus.

• Junior seminars, what? Concentration adviser Jeff Miron confirmed existing rumors of the financial crisis' latest casualty: Econ 980. Though the decision has yet to be formally announced in mid March, we have a few words of advice for sophomore Econ concentrators: don't get your hopes up.

• And Christina Romer? What was that all about? Too bad that's one secret Miron will never tell.