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Rupert Murdoch is getting serious about making people pay for content online. The News Corp owner gave an interview in his native country to Sky News Australia (partially owned by News Corp) in which he made his intentions perfectly clear: people will pay for the content his businesses put out.

The FDIC closed 9 banks in one day last Friday, including California National Bank of Los Angeles, which had 68 branches throughout the city. CalNational and the 8 other banks, which were also in Illinois, Arizona, and Texas, were all divisions of the Chicago-based bank holding company FBOP Corp, according to the Associated Press . 115 banks have been closed so far this year, and 140 since last November. One of the best tools we've found to track the bank closings comes from the Wall Street Journal online team. Click here to use an interactive version of the below map, on which you can see where the closing have hit, and get details about each bank. (H/t to Barry Ritholtz for the reminder about this interactive map).

The dollar has now reached its lowest value against the Euro since last September, and the Libor is down to a record low of 0.30 percent (see Bloomberg's coverage here ). The impact of this move doesn't seem to be too great at the moment, but any shift for the dollar will surely affect currencies pegged to the greenback...like Ven . Ven is the currency of choice for a growing (though still very small) number of people who are using peer-to-peer curencies. Ven bills itself as a "social currency." It was once a currency used on the Internet, but broke free of the virtual world and into the real one two years ago. And the Wall Street Journal's Andy Jordan reports that it is just one of several new efforts to create peer-to-peer currencies. Here's his story: Does this sound like a breaktrhough or a rmodern day form of mercantilism? Whether you think these curencies are a tiny fad, and reject the title of Jordan's report-- "The Coming Currency Revolution" --they might provide interesting case studies of how business relationships might be shifting in the digital era.

The Wall Street Journal 's August forecasting survey shows most of the participating economists feel the economy stabilizing: After months of uncertainty, economists are finally seeing a break in the clouds. Forecasts were revised upward for every period, with 27 economists saying the recession had ended and 11 seeing a trough this month or next. Gross domestic product in the third quarter is now expected to show 2.4% growth at a seasonally adjusted annual rate amid signs of life in the manufacturing sector, partly spurred by inventory adjustments and strong demand for the "cash for clunkers" car-rebate program. Here's what the Journal's GDP forecasting trend looks like: This month the Journal asked economists to weigh in on Ben Bernanke. The Fed Chair has 6 months left in his current term, and the economists surveyed give him a 71% chance of being reappointed. Wall Street Journal news editor Phil Izzo discusses econiomists' views on Bernanke and the survey with Kelly Evans : Click here for full coverage of the survey, and here for the Journal's always useful interactive survey charts and graphs.

Ben Bernanke has half a year left on his term as chair of the Federal Reserve , and at this point it is not certain whether he will be asked to serve another. Bernanke has said that he expects the economy to pick up later this year , and perhaps his future as chair depends on whether he is right or not. David Wessel , economics editor of the Wall Street Journal , assesses Bernanke's tenure in this short video, and says Bernanke "did a great job in saving us from something that could have been a catastrophe."

If there was any doubt as to how restaurants are doing in this recession, a few recent developments have made the struggles of dining establishments clear. Last week's National Restaurant Association Show--its 90th annual show-- drew just 54,000 attendees . That's a 24 percent drop from last year. And the cable tv news station TV1 found in a poll that half of New Yorkers have stopped eating out . Monica Bertran of Bloomberg spoke about the challenges for restaurants with Julia Stewart , chairman and CEO of DineEquity . DineEquity owns Applebees and IHOP, and Stewart tells Bertran that the restaurant is probably paying the price for overbuilding during the last decade. But she is optimistic that things are turning around: Meanwhile, New York restaurateur Danny Meyer tells the Wall Street Journal's Katy McLaughlin that many eateries will have to accept lower margins, as he has. And he expects more and more higher end restaurants to close in the coming months, as the economy just isn't supporting expensive meals: I don’t think there’s going to be sustainable demand for restaurants that force you to spend hours there. Long tasting menus will continue to be elected by some but cannot be legislated by the restaurant. We’re going to have more bistros and trattorias. People will have luxury items—caviar, foie gras, truffles—less frequently, having done without them for a year and a half, but they will come to appreciate them more because it won’t be at every bar and grill in the city. Read A Future with Fewer Reservations here .

Economists in the Wall Street Journal 's monthly forecasting survey seem to be growing a bit more optimistic--and on average they predict the recession to end in August. This is a month sooner than the April forecast . The survey was conducted before last week's reports of dropping retail sales and increased unemployment claims. But the economists were already anticipating Americans to consume less and save more, and, as Journal's Phil Izzo writes, that is why they project a slow recovery: A consumer retrenchment is one factor that is likely to make any recovery a long slog. The economists on average expect the unemployment rate to climb to 9.7% by the end of the year, with two million more jobs lost over the next 12 months, even as growth returns to the economy. The depth of the downturn means it will take years to eat up the slack created by the recession. Nearly half of the economists said it will take three to four years to close the output gap, while more than a quarter say it will take five to six years. Here's a look at the GDP projections for the forecast, in context ( click here for an interactive version of the graph ): The survey shows generally postive reactions from economists to the actions taken by the Obama administration, and storng support for Fed Chair Ben Bernanke in particular. Phil Izzo and Kelly Evans discuss the May forecast in this video: For the full May forecast, click here .

Economists polled in the April Wall Street Journal Forecasting Survey "expect the recession to end in September, though most say it won't be until the second half of 2010 that the economy recovers enough to bring down unemployment." More than a third of the economists expect unemployment to peak in the first half of 2010, as jobs lag economic recovery. Despite the grim news for jobs, economists are seeing more signs of a recovery in the broader economy this year. On average, the 53 economists surveyed expect the recession to end in September, compared with the October forecast last month. It marked the first time since the recession began that the economists didn't push the date of recovery further into the future. The survey was conducted April 3-6, before the release of trade data this week that led some forecasters to revise upward their outlook for the first quarter. The below chart shows the economists' GDP projections in historical context (a link to the intereactive version of the chart is available below): In explaining the April forecast, the Journal's Phil Izzo says not to look at this forecast as "optimistic," but to focus on the fact that this is the first time in months that the surveyed economists did not move their projection for the end of the recession forward. Here is Izzo with Kelly Evans : You can access all of the April Forecast's data in useful multimedia charts here .