All of your aspirational yuppie mall brands like Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma and Coach (which used to be legitimately fancy, years ago, before they decided to start selling loudly branded handbags to Bethesdan tweens) are having to lower prices permanently because nobody has money anymore and they don’t want to get people used to insane 75% off sales all the time. MORE »

The Federal Reserve this afternoon is expected to cut the fed funds rate from 1% to .5%, a modern record. The government is printing more money than you can shake a stick at, all night, every night, to give to financial companies. This should be an incredibly sexy time to make LOANS. Overnight loans, car loans, Truck Nutz loans, who cares, loans loans loans, free money! The only problem is that we’ve developed a terrorist’s mindset in which the American economy, as a whole, has become the enemy. MORE »

That 0.6% bit of economic growth in the first quarter of 2008 was just the pathetic result of $3.50-a-gallon gasoline, but there is one sector of the U.S. economy that’s truly booming: Desperate Americans are selling off their last possessions on Craigslist and other online flea-market sites, just so they can buy a little food and gas. MORE »