After dropping like a stone for the past three or four years, existing home prices in the United States went up a little teeny tiny bit in the second quarter of 2009. HOORAY WE CAN REFINANCE OUR WAY TO HAPPINESS AGAIN! So, the sales price of American houses went up by 2.9% between April Fools Day and the end of June, but they also dropped by 15% as compared to a year earlier. Never mind, we’re still doomed. [Washington Post]

Have you ever had a holiday vacation on Martha’s Vineyard? So boring! Once you get over the “Ah and there’s where Ted Kennedy crashed his car and drowned that lady” historical thing — sorry, Denby! — you realize it’s just a place full of crappy tourist shops and terrible humid boiling weather and a bunch of ugly gated beach mansions surrounded by swamps, bogs and discarded “lobster rolls.” How to jazz it up? Barack Obama decided to go on the teevee to announce what everybody already knew he was doing: giving Ben Bernanke another term. MORE »

Some math wizards down in Texas have come to an incredible conclusion: What with 6.5 million lost jobs since this Hellcession began, there’s less rush-hour traffic. HEY THAT ALMOST MAKES A CRAZY KIND OF SENSE. But the news isn’t all good. MORE »

It’s official for Sad America: As the economy shrunk another 6.1% in the first quarter of 2009, the total GDP loss for this recession (so far!) is 3.3%, making this the worst recession since the legendary “Elvis Downtown” of 1957-58. And there’s only one economic collapse larger than our current horror: the Great Depression of 1929-c.1940. We sure hope Obama’s 100th Fireside Chat tonight is a doozy! [Bloomberg]

The First Hundred Days! Oh how we’ve talked about them, and even lived through them, although that’s never as good as talking about them. And now? We must assess. According to cable news and The Politico, which owns cable news, this has been a very tough, very disappointing, very humiliating 100 days for Mr. Socialist Kenyan Barack Obama. It’s amazing he has (barely) escaped impeachment, thus far. Also, teabaggng! America, at the teabag-roots level, has REVOLTED against this false president. And that’s why 72% of Americans heartily approve of this new administration. Wait, HUH? MORE »

Not that we should put much faith in what Professional Auditors say, but a terrifying new report predicts that a fourth of America’s remaining publicly-traded companies may be gone by the end of the year. This means 3,600 shareholder-owned businesses are in “going concern” territory, or in serious danger of failure in the next 12 months — and this is just based on first-quarter reports, which are already up 9% vs. 2008 “going concern” filings, so, uhm. MORE »

Friday! Peggy! She has predictions, for you, your dogs, your hair, and especially for your abandoned skyscrapers. Peggy Noonan does not simply sit in her Upper East Side apartment gulping whisky sours while breathlessly watching RedTube clips, her small nervous hands clutching her crucifix, and other things. No! She looks outside, sometimes. She long suspected something was a bit different out there — once, not so many months ago, she ventured out on foot. Things had changed. The bustle was gone, the Mexican was no longer handing out advertisements and then running, in terror, as Peggy Noonan yelled Reagan-esque platitudes and tried to … catch this Mexican. It is hard to catch household slaves. It is a game for the young, really. Peggy remembers when she was young. It was the Seventies. MORE »

Jesus christ, this whole country is drowning in its own blood. We take a day off — the Sabbath — and there are another half-dozen gruesome murders or murder-suicides. Cops and the families of the killers seem to be particularly common targets. We don’t recall Homicidal Frenzy as being a normal part of, say, the recessions of 1981-82, 1991-92 or 2001. MORE »

It’s another new new unemployment record, America! The happy month of March saw 669,000 U.S. jobs vanish, bringing the jobless rate up to 8.5% — the highest since the end of Reagan’s Lil’ Depression at the end of 1982. About 5 million jobs have now been lost in this current Great Recession. And stocks are on fire — the Dow’s over 8,000 again! MORE »

Ever get the feeling that your country has become one of those places where this kind of thing is always making it to the nightly news in rich countries? [Political IQ]

The Czech government collapsed, which means current prime minister — and current president of the European Union, whoops! — Mirek Topolanek is now powerless and will soon be jobless, but that doesn’t mean he can’t deliver an apocalyptically Slavic-ly gloomy sermon against the United States and its terrible bailout plan, which is just like the American response to the previous Great Depression, which sort of led to … Hitler? Yes, Hitler. Depression + Czech troubles = Hitler. Works every time. MORE »