categories: NPR
Pop Goes the Weasel. Not just a silly song about a monkey chasing a weasel, apparently. Some claim it's Cockney rhyming slang for pawning your coat. Coat rhymes with stoat, weasel another word for stoat.
I learned this when Jessie Goldstein and I went to profile pawn shop owner Dave MacArthur. When I was up in Maine this summer, I learned that pawn shops up there were seeing a huge increase in business, people coming in, pawning or selling items to get money for gas and to pay the upcoming winter fuel bills. This was when the price of oil was going through the roof.
I made some calls and found out this was the case with pawn shops across the country. Since March 2008, owners were seeing a record increase in loans... and a lot of it directly traceable to the price of oil.
