Even the Nobel Prize is Being Devalued

I thought they pretty well devalued it when they gave it to Jimmy Carter and Yasser Arafat, and when they gave the Peace Prize to Obama for serving two whole weeks as president, but even the monetary awards are dropping:

Thanks to a sluggish economy and unstable financial markets, the Nobel Foundation is being forced to tighten its belt a bit, announcing Monday it would pare down cash prizes awarded to Nobel Prize winners.

The foundation, which awards the prestigious Nobel Prize in numerous academic fields and for humanitarian work, will slash prize winnings by 20 percent to around $1.1 million, the Associated Press reported, the first time the organization has done so since 1949.

Prize winnings, awarded in Swedish Kronor, were the equivalent of about $1.4 million last year.

The Peace Prize has become a bit of a joke, often awarded not for actual deeds but for whatever is politically correct at the time.