Craigslist has become a popular choice for mostly free classified ads in over 450 cities worldwide. The site's appeal to consumers is obvious: The ability to buy or sell just about anything for free. And that "anything" included sex.

Law enforcement agencies have gotten so riled up over the proliferation of sex for sale ads on Craigslist, that the company is finally taking steps to limit the listings. Craigslist has made an agreement with attorneys general from 40 states that the site will require those placing ads for "erotic services" to pay a fee with a credit card and give the site a working telephone number.

The collection of that information ensures that the sex for sale ads will not be completely anonymous, and law enforcement will have a simple paper trail to follow in trying to enforce laws against prostitution. Although Craigslist has been trying to limit ads for illegal activities, its has found it difficult.

Will this new process aid law enforcement efforts? I doubt it. It will likely reduce the number of sex-for-sale related listings. But there will still be listings, and enterprising young business owners will find a way around the controls. All it will take is a disposable telephone number and a disposable credit card number. I give Craigslist credit for trying to limit advertising for illegal activities, but I predict that this won't have much of a long-term impact. Personally, I wonder why they don't just eliminate the "erotic services" section of the site if they care so much about the issue.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

It's interesting to see how an area, country, or society can change its morals almost at the drop of a hat.

For example, Weimar Germany, devastated by the worldwide financial collapse of the 1930's and saddled with an insurmountable war debt, quickly became a moral wasteland. As fortunes crumbled and the future seemed hopeless, the basic rules governing social interaction evaporated and Berlin became a destination for sex tourists, not unlike today's Bankok.

Businessmen from around the world used their vastly inflated home currencies to buy the affections of "demi-castors," or upstanding middle-class women who turned to prostitution as a means of making ends meet. From matrons to schoolgirls, women from every walk of life and level of society demonstrated that, in the end, there is one commodity that never loses its value.

When sociologists compile the reasons that people turn to prostitution, the usual suspects are drug addiction, poverty, and abuse. However, as gas prices continue to steadily rise, it's looks like a new reason for turning tricks may edge its way into the top three...

Last Wednesday, police arrested Angela Eversole for prostitution, as well as "doing business without an occupational license." According to Eversole's boyfriend, she is not a professional sex worker; however, when she wandered into a police sting operation in a Day's Inn in Fort Wright, Kentucky, she was performing sexual acts in return for economic remuneration. According to reports, Eversole's customer, Kenneth Nowak, paid her with a $100 gas card and "assorted gifts."

Even the authorities seem to recognize that Eversole may have had non-traditional reasons for drifting into the seedy world of sex for money. As Kenton County prosecutor Ken Easterling noted, "It's sad when people are selling their bodies for gas." What's sadder is that the the police are letting Eversole take full responsibility for the crime, without even a thought for her pimp. Is it really that hard to fill out an arrest warrant for OPEC?

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. He tried to prostitute himself for Tic-Tacs, but the lady at the convenience store just doubled the price.

Late last week, I wrote a post about Craigslist's recent emergence as a prostitution clearinghouse. I thought that one post should do it; after all, how much can be said about the online purchasing site and its forays into the sex trade?

Apparently, more than I thought.

According to the New York Daily News, Craigslist has begun featuring posts that halve the distance between rental listings and prostitution solicitations.

Generally, the advertisements offer rental spaces in highly-desirable, pricey areas like the Upper West Side and the Financial district. The prices are ridiculously low, sometimes even free, as long as the roommate is willing to model, bestow "benefits" at least once a week, or otherwise barter for the rent. My favorite listing was offered by an amateur photographer who "would be willing to let the right girl live there for FREE in exchange for her being "...at my call to be my model. [She] must be attractive and sexy, like a 9 out of 10 [and] very thin, size 0 or 2." Excuse me while I have a flashback to Breakfast at Tiffany's!

Anyway...given our increasing reliance on the internet as a means of buying, selling, marketing, and socializing, I guess this shouldn't be surprising. After all, we're talking about a city where women are willing to date in return for a free meal; can rent really be all that far behind? While the whole thing strikes me as a little skeevy, the same could easily be said of most of the New York real estate market!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. He acknowledges that some of his irritation may be sour grapes; after all, it's been years since he could fit into a size 2!

Flipping through the newspaper, I recently came across an article discussing the rising problem of prostitutes advertising their services on Craigslist. According to the author, Vivekananda Nemana, a probe by New York city councilman Eric Gioia had found that 85% of "erotic services" ads were offering illegal acts.

Now, while I'm a regular Craigslist visitor, I tend to hang out in the apartment, gig, job, and furniture listings; never having ventured into the dark world of "erotic services," I hadn't seen any prurient sexual ads. Although, to be honest, some prurient sexuality would really have made those job listings a lot more interesting. I can see it now: "Midtown advertising agency ISO discreet, erotic copywriter, 25-40. Must be able to type 60 wpm. With one hand."

At any rate, I expected the prostitute advertisements to be somewhat subtle. The article had stated that "Thousands of men and women promise 'sensual, full service massages' with 'all your fantasies fulfilled.'" It seemed to me that these sorts of ads left a lot to the imagination, and I could easily visualize a young sex worker, brought up on charges, claiming that "full service" meant that she did both shiatsu and Swedish, while "all your fantasies fulfilled" meant that you were dreaming about getting rid of that lower back pain.

When I actually went to Craigslist, however, I found that the marketing was a little more...spirited. One site promised "Crazy Low Rates" and declared that "CONDUM [sic] USAGE IS A MUST FOR EVERYTHING," which seemed strange, given that the ad claimed to be offering massages. Most ads were more subtle, although many of them gave wink-wink nudge-nudge hints that they offered more than mere massages. On the other hand, several postings cautioned that they don't do "F/S"; upon further investigation, I came to the conclusion that this means "full service," as "fridge/stove," "feet per second," and "frozen section" all seemed just a little too weird to be plausible.

While my explorations of Craigslist's sleazy side were far from comprehensive, I saw enough to convince me that there are a lot of people offering a lot of illegal services out there. I understand that Craigslist is unable (and unwilling) to police its listings, but it seems a little amazing to me that it's possible for people to so bluntly advertise for sex. Since when did my favorite user to user purchasing site become the best little brothel on the internet?

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. If people are using Craigslist to find cheap, meaningless sex, then what's the point of MySpace?

Last month I wrote about the slowdown in Las Vegas: the city has among the most hard-hit real estate markets in the country, and traffic is down as Americans travel less as they cope with high gas prices. Vacancies are up and room rates have fallen by more than 20%.

And yes, the city's brothels are reporting slower business, according to the MSNBC video below. Business is down as much as 25% at some locations, and some think it could get worse.

In the midst of the recent Spitzer scandal, my wife asked me a particularly interesting question. During a discussion of the Governor's dual life, her boss asked why men would go to prostitutes in the first place. My wife had no idea, and passed the question on to me.

I would like to point out, for the record, that I have no professional knowledge of prostitution, from either end of the transaction; apart from a brief stint as an artists' model in college, I have never taken off my clothes for money. However, I do read a lot, and have done a fair bit of research into sexual politics and theory, and own a copy of Xaviera Hollander's The Happy Hooker. That having been said, I also wandered all over the internet!

Although there are numerous reasons for hiring a prostitute, most of them seem to fit within three key categories: