In Gone with the Wind, Rhett Butler wryly notes that there is "just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one." Having observed the near-Roman excesses of New York's money men over the past couple of years, I might go even further and argue that the end of a civilization tends to be even more outrageously profligate than its beginning. After all, it's hard to imagine stern, conservative men like J.P. Morgan and Andrew Mellon giving in to the incredible excesses of the latest round of would-be magnates.

While tales like Stephen Schwarzman's million dollar birthday and Dick Fuld's five homes tend to capture the public's attention, these outrageous expenditures are only the tip of the iceberg. From $175 hamburgers at the Wall Street Burger Shoppe to John Thain's $1.22 million office redecoration, it has become increasingly clear that New York's financial workers have spent the last few years living in a completely alien world. What's more, they are either unable or unwilling to adapt to the changing realities of America's economy.

The business model of The Huffington Post, the largest and most famous political blogging and opinion site, fell apart completely yesterday. According to Hitwise, Huffington's traffic grew by 21% from October 28 to November 4. It has been rising sharply over the last year as interest in the election picked up speed.

With the election over, Huffington's traffic is certain to drop sharply and all of the reporters and editors it has hired since the beginning of the year may not have much to do.

Traditional wisdom is that old media will have to cut costs to stay alive, but there are some very successful Internet properties that may have to cut more since their natural audiences are leaving them. Political sites may turn to business and lifestyle reporting, but those categories are already crowded.

The Wall Street Journal writes "History, however, indicates that news outlets that benefit significantly from an election suffer about the same amount when it's over, so the Web sites will expand now at their peril."

Looking at Huffington, audience measurement service Compete shows the political website's traffic up 711% for the year ending in September. That number probably got even more impressive last month. In September, Huffington had 5.3 million visitors. In 2008, that figure was never above one million.

With all of the audience that Huffington is almost certain to lose it will also part with most of its advertising. And, with that, the large staff it will not be able to afford.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

As newspapers nearly everywhere fret over the threat that bloggers pose to their very existence, one of the best and best-known blogs out there has decided she wants to have more in common with traditional media. The Huffington Post, which sports 43 full-time employees and another 1,800 bloggers, has decided that it wants to become an "all-inclusive digital newspaper," according to the Editors Weblog. Best-known as a left-leaning political blog, co-founder Arianna Huffington wants to make it more balanced, and has even suggested she would like have someone like Karl Rove join the staff.

The Huffington Post could give traditional news sites a run for their money because it links to contents from numerous other sites. It's status as a sort of news 'zine allows it to provide readers with a sort of "best of the web" news coverage -- a one stop-source for everything (some readers think) they need to read.

It remains to be seen whether The Huffington Post will be able to make the crossover into becoming a more "fair and balanced" media outlet. The founder, after all, has a history of switching sides as it suits the prevailing political winds.

And we all love our media "fair and balanced," don't we? We all turn to Fox News (News Corp. NYSE: NWS) as a place to watch right-wing whack jobs spouting their demagoguery, but no one would ever take it seriously as a source of information. Right? Right?!

The head of CBS (NYSE: CBS) operation CBSNews.com is leaving to become CEO of popular blog Huffington Post. Blogging must have hit the big time.

Huffington is bringing Betsy Morgan on board to run one of the most visited blogs on the internet. Calling itself an online newspaper, the collection of breaking stories and opinion has raised money from Softbank and Greycroft Partners. The company may have brought in as much as $10 million from VCs.

Huffington claims to have 3.5 million unique visitors a month, according to The New York Times. The company has more than 40 employees.

While the news is not earth-shattering by itself, it does highlight a trend as management and editorial talent moves from mainstream media to companies like Huffington, TechCrunch, and GigaOm. Most of these blogs were started by one or two people, but are now companies that reportedly bring in seven figures in revenue each year.

The rise of the blog may also be something of an unpleasant reminder to the newspaper industry that it has not done well with its online businesses and that much smaller news and comment sites have risen from nowhere to take over much of the market. Once again entrepreneurs triumph over big business.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Not too long I posted a story about how Yahoo! Answers was becoming a dominant part of Yahoo!'s traffic, and one of the most visited information and reference type sites online. Techcrunch notes that Yahoo! Answers is launching something called an 'Ask the Planet' campaign. The idea is that celebrities, notables, and other high-profile type people (like Arianna Huffington, Suze Orman, Stephen Hawking, Bono, etc) will provide the answers in order to win prizes.

The prizes are pretty nifty, like free gas for a year for answering correctly to a question posed by the Click and Clack brothers from NPR. Yahoo! is clearly trying to drive the visibility of an already popular service even higher by using celebrity mojo. The question is, how and when will Yahoo! choose to slip in advertising or seek to monetize this interesting resource, and what effect will that have on their traffic and bottom line?