To be clear, I don't think that the NGIN slowdown is caused by this exception stuff, because that has been taken out and was really a different performance problem altogether. I only raised it because it was similar -- a problem only on 1.8.7 that was fixed as soon as someone mentioned it.
I think it is very interesting that the specific test produced in the original post is actually faster under Rails 3 and Ruby 1.9.2 than it is under Rails 2 and 1.8.7.
My only grief with you, fauigerzigerk, is that you claim the Rails team doesn't "give a shit about performance", when the performance problems seem to be related to people using an older version of Ruby. I think you are making an extraordinary claim -- that the rails team doesn't "give a shit", in in fact, they clear do give a shit.