After October's Google PageRank massacre, a lot of sites scrambled in hopes of trying to salvage what they had left. Some stopped paid links altogether. Some stopped advertising. One guy audited his site, where he discovered that 20 of 25 paid sites were negatively impacted by the PageRank drop but Google rankings never changed for his customer.
Interesting, eh?
Actually, some don't find that surprising. Perhaps this was just a wake-up call initially for link buyers. Eventually, the rankings may drop.
Others feel that Google PageRank is overrated, so perhaps it's just not a good measure of comparison.
The general consensus to those afflicted by dropped PageRanks is that nothing has changed. Rankings are still there.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.