Spare time - beat the bookie!!
If you have any spare time at the moment, why not fill it with something that is guaranteed to make some money - even in a depression?
Now I fully appreciate that there will be many out there who will poo poo such a proposition, but just as there is a good living to be made by professionals who "arbitrage" in the currency exchanges, the exact same principle can be applied to any market - especially betting makets.
Without expanding into the complexities of the principle, the internet offers a wide choice of betting opportunities - horses, soccer, football, rugby etc etc. There are many trustworthy internet betting companies offering odds at each event/game/race, but because there is competition among them they rarely offer the same odds on the same horse (for example), and because (most importantly) it is now possible to place LAY bets, anybody with the nouse to work it out may exploit the differences in pricing. All that is required is to BET and LAY at the same time, on the same event, but (most impotantly) not with the same bookie - and ONLY if the difference between the LAY and BET shows a guaranteed win.
So why, I am sure you are asking, does everyone not do it? There are three difficulties, the first is that it is time consuming - hence the reason for posting. Next, due to competition, pricing differences are not only generally tight, but when exploitable they are quite small - this means they take work to find (several hours on the internet), and to exploit they require bets of a reasonable size. The latter is NOT a problem because you cannot lose, but it does require that you deposit a reasonable sum with your betting agent ( I keep circa $1,000 with each - about ten accounts). The final tricky part is that you need to be reasonably fast with calculations - and most importantly know the fomulae to apply for each potential opportunity to see whether it exists or not - and then you must calculate exactly the ammount to BET and at the same time the exact ammount to LAY. (You bet and lay on the same event every time - whatever the outcome you WIN)
Rather long winded I know, and I'm beginning to wish I hadn't started, but if any of the non doubters would like to know more, feel free to ask. Please though, if you want to poo poo the idea, don't be too rude - it WILL come back to bite you!!