• OH LOOK, A BOOK REVIEW, BY YOUR EDITOR: “According to Kurt Andersen’s slim new book Reset, the economic collapse is a magical second chance for America — an opportunity for a nation of greedy vulgarians and fat slobs to find new purpose in our post-binge society.” [Las Vegas Weekly]

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]

Poor Rhode Island is a wee state with a huge unemployment problem, horrible taxes, and an abysmally high cost of living. Fortunately, it’s also got a governor with a can-do attitude who sees one very obvious way to dig the state out of its current budget mess: just get state workers to take two and a half weeks off, unpaid, over the next year or so. MORE »

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 »

IT’S LIKE A RECOVERY, BUT WITH NO EQUITY, SAVINGS, CONSUMER SPENDING, JOBS, RETIREMENT ACCOUNTS, INNOVATION, STRONG CURRENCY, AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE, BASIC SHELTER, OR LONG-TERM PROSPECTS FOR A COMPETITIVE MODERN ECONOMY: “The housing market continues to threaten signs of an economic recovery, with new data released on Thursday showing an all-time high of Americans falling behind on loan payments and the rate of home foreclosures unlikely to peak until late in 2010.” But the stock markets are up! Everyone in America owns bundles of good stocks, right? Right?? [The Hill]

Remember all that talk about how the unemployment rate fell by .1 percent last month and this proved, definitively, that happy days were here again? Remember all the sailors kissing ladies in the streets, and the wonderful ticker-tape parades? Well, everything has gone back to being terrible, according to New Statistics. MORE »

• U.S. WORKER PRODUCTIVITY HITS SIX-YEAR HIGH: Probably because everyone’s scared to death of losing their jobs, American productivity is at the highest rate since 2003. [Marketwatch]

Remember Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire RINO who accepted a top job in Barack Obama’s Politburo and then melodramatically refused to actually take the job, like some emotionally unstable goth teen? Well he is back, sort of! The grandstanding old cocksucker went on CNBC to bitch about “Cash for Clunkers,” a government rebate plan with broad bipartisan support and popular acclaim that accomplishes the neat trick of getting polluting old jalopies off the road while keeping the car companies alive during these last tough months of the Great Recession — because this brief and helpful program will obviously cause the United States to become a “banana republic in 10 years.” This is what Judd Gregg said, on teevee. MORE »

Sad news! While sales of peasant dwellings have begun to creep upward due to the first-time home buyer tax credit, low mortgage rates, expanded FHA loans, and of course FIRE SALE PRICING on foreclosed homes, homes costing more than $750,000 have been difficult to move in this market. Wealthy home owners (or “the middle class,” as they’re known in pricey markets like New York, DC, and the Bay Area) are finding it difficult to sell their million-dollar shacks. However, at least some of them are able to rent out their sad dwellings for, oh, $7500 a month, so don’t feel too bad about this problem yet. MORE »

By the Comics Curmudgeon
There is a certain class of American who cares nothing about the tales of economic carnage that fill our newspapers day after day. I’m talking, of course, about editorial cartoonists, whose jobs are basically guaranteed, and whose pay makes possible a lifestyle that makes AIG vice presidents look like starving hobos eating dirt under a rusty, leaky bridge. Of course, these princes of the pen also have the best health insurance, with fresh kidneys and livers delivered twice weekly to keep their insides smelling fresh. Nevertheless, as part of their job, they must pay attention to the day-to-day problems suffered by you, the “little people,” and have noticed that maybe things are not quite so rosy further down the socioeconomic ladder! MORE »

Hey, a new survey about things people don’t know: Gallup asked some random selection of Americans who haven’t had their phones shut off to rate nine major federal agencies they may or may not have heard about, on the AM radio. The results are … bad news for, let’s see, Ben Bernanke? Sure! MORE »