A while back, I took a look at the fact that Kellogg's (NYSE: K) would not renew its sponsorship of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps -- thanks to "Bonggate." I saw an article earlier this week, an article that was brought to my attention by my hero Darren Rovell over on his blog, that K's decision benefited the San Francisco Food Bank.

As long as someone needing food in the San Francisco area is not adverse to a picture of Michael Phelps (sans bong) on their Corn Flakes, they will find their bounty at the San Francisco Food Bank. According to this article, K donated nearly 2 tons of cereal to the food bank - reportedly from their Portland, Oregon distribution center. Rovell was told that the cereal firm is eligible for a tax deduction in the realm of $15,000 for the donation.

Gayle Keck, of the San Francisco Food Bank stated, "Though Kellogg's and their star spokesman hit a patch of rough water, San Francisco's hungry just got thrown a life preserver." While full of bad puns, the statement is accurate and piqued my interest in K's performance (which is why we are looking at a food firm in JockStocks).

When the picture of Michael Phelps inhaling from a bong first began appearing on the internet, Mark Fightmaster wrote that "It appears that the sponsors are going to stand by their man, from Speedo to Parenting magazine."

Visa said that it had "spoken with Michael and he has expressed regret for the situation, has committed to being accountable and improving his judgment in the future [...] We intend to support him as he looks to move forward."

But there is a defector from Phelps' camp. Kellogg Co. (NYSE: K) has elected not to renew Phelps's contract that expires at the end of the month.

Maybe you have heard, maybe you haven't. Olympic hero and NBC posterboy Michael Phelps got caught in flagrante delicto with a marijuana pipe at a party after the Olympic Games had completed. So, of course his sponsors are jumping ship left and right to distance themselves from this scofflaw, right? Wrong ... and somewhere, Cheech and Chong are smiling.

It appears that the sponsors are going to stand by their man, from Speedo to Parenting magazine. In fact, Visa (NYSE: V) came out Tuesday and stated that it supports Phelps despite his little misstep. According to Visa, the company has "spoken with Michael and he has expressed regret for the situation, has committed to being accountable and improving his judgment in the future ... We intend to support him as he looks to move forward."

Voting continues in our Best & Worst in Money 2008 feature, and it looks like early favorites include falling gasoline prices, Wal-Mart, Joe the Plumber, and former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Did they get your vote?

Close races include the Breakout Person of the Year, in which vice presidential contender Sarah Palin and Olympic gold medal winner Michael Phelps duke it out for first place, while poor Neel Kashkari, who is in charge of the U.S. Treasury's financial relief funds, is in last place with only about 6% of the vote.

The Most Disturbing Consumer Trend is another close race, with plunging retirement accounts and falling home values virtually a tie. It's also a very close race between Wall Street and Kmart for Most in Need of a Makeover. Not much interest in making over Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX), however, as it has only about 4% of the vote in that category.

Lower fuel prices are clearly the most popular Silver Lining to the Recession with about 62% of the vote so far. Joe the Plumber, with 57% of the vote, has a clear lead over distant second place Rev. Jeremiah Wright as the Most Notable 15 Minutes of Fame. And disgraced New York Governor Eliot Spitzer leads the Biggest Fall from Grace category with about 56% of the vote.

This post is part of our feature on Money Winners of 2008. See all 20.

It wasn't like Michael Phelps hadn't done well for himself by the time he got into the swimming pool at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He was pulling in between $4 and $5 million a year after winning six gold medals in the 2004 Athens Olympics. And was already a sports marketer's wet dream, so to speak.

But then he went and broke Marc Spitz's 36-year record by winning eight gold medals, and the real race was on: to break out as the first $100 million Olympian.

Or at least that's what his managers and agent were saying. Measuring the precise wealth of sports stars is something of an art. Most of their great wealth comes from corporate endorsement deals, which are often heralded more as approximations than exact hard figures.

This post is part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst in Money 2008 feature.

The great media circus that so richly illuminates American life is constantly producing new stars to dazzle us, and this year has been no exception. In addition to the usual offerings from television (Tina Fey), sports (Michael Phelps) and books and film (Stephanie Meyer), 2008 saw new stars emerge from the presidential election (Sarah Palin) and the spectacular and ongoing financial crisis (Neel Kashkari). Of course no one knows what 2009 will bring, but we can be sure of one thing: that each of these new stars will likely try to cash in on their new-found celebrity in the new year.

Tina Fey has been fairly well known for several years, first as the head writer and Weekend Update host on Saturday Night Live, then as the creator and star of the critically acclaimed show 30 Rock. However, she ascended to a higher level of celebrity with her dead-on impersonation of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. (It's so good that if you search for the phrase "dead-on impersonation" on both AOL and Google, the first results that come up are clips of Fey doing her Palin shtick.) There was a lot of debate about whether Fey hurt or helped Palin, but it's pretty clear that all of the attention helped Fey enormously, making her one of the most famous female comedians in the U.S. Look for more TV and film deals for her in 2009.

Usually, my Bloggingstocks posts go under the general heading of "Going down in flames," and my basic beat is stocks that you absolutely DON'T want to invest in. That having been said, under the current circumstances, I've decided to cool down the rhetoric. After all, when commentators are yelling about a financial holocaust, armageddon, "blood on the trading floor," and so forth, it just doesn't seem like a good idea to fan the flames.

Although, in the interests of total disclosure, I should point out that my wife, who works down the street from the Stock Exchange, DID recently see the four horsemen of the apocalypse sipping coffee beverages in a Starbucks. Famine, ironically, was wolfing down coffee cake like Michael Phelps on weed.

At any rate, the last few days has witnessed people running for safe bets like oil, gold, and silver. This makes a lot of sense; when things get tough, people want to put their money into things that they can see and feel. Gold feels solid, as does silver, and oil isn't likely to drop anytime soon. Like people hoarding diamonds in times of turmoil, commodities just seem really secure.

The New York Times reports that General Electric Company's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal invested $894 million to secure the broadcast rights for the Beijing Olympics and it expects to earn a $100 million profit. The Times also quotes CEO Jeff Immelt as saying that the benefits to GE are even greater -- including "$700 million worth of services it is providing for the Games and its long-term relationship with China, where it does more than $4 billion worth of business."

How did GE make a profit on its Olympics investment? The Times reports that it was lucky that no big protests or press censorship marred the games. And it negotiated with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to schedule popular competitions -- such as swimming and gymnastics -- to coincide with prime time slots and to including much more Internet and on mobile device events streaming.

The Games have attracted enormous audiences. According to the Times, "the Games have drawn an average audience of about 30 million a night on NBC itself, millions more on NBC's cable channels, 30 million unique visitors to NBC's Olympics Web site, 6.3 million shared videos from the coverage streamed on the site."