In 2008 the US prison population rose to 1.6 million—2.3 million, counting local jails. The increase in prisoners mostly consisted of government officials jailed for not being able to pay their hefty prison construction bills.

Look, nobody likes to lock people up, except for the prison-industrial complex and its political protectors, and Republicans. But order must be kept. Control must be had. Mayhem must be staunched. Bankers in England are getting a 50% bonus tax hit this year, and brother, if you don't they're going to be shivving accountants and tossing burning mattresses from atop their tiers, then you don't know what life is really like in The Pen, by which we mean An Office with Pens, Although Most Work is Admittedly Done on Bloomberg Terminals.

Indignities abound. Tavern on the Green, once the most popular mediocre tourist trap restaurant with annoying mirrored mazelike walls in New York, is now being forced to auction off all of its bric-a-brac, as it's going out of business.

Bankers: Go buy all the topiary and garish art. Use it to spruce up a federal prison. The PR value is great, and you'll have a nicer place to look forward to when you get locked up for tax evasion.
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America's House Flippers, the backbone of our economy's rise to world dominance, have been waiting dormantly for this moment, like so many of those frogs that hide under mud in the desert during the dry season, then come out when it rains. Well, it's raining now—raining opportunity! For house flipping! Now, people are flipping houses that got foreclosed on after the last Greater Fool bought it, from a house flipper. But beware: "Unlike the boom-time flippers, the latest generation needs cold cash, lots of local-market knowledge and strong nerves."

Or you can learn how to make your fortune with no money down and no knowledge, from an infomercial!

Either way, it's a good career for homebound retirees, who would rather not be retirees except for the fact that they're old and there are no jobs out there, so guess what, they're retirees. Just accept it, grandpa. But with house flipping easier than ever, you old folks should have no trouble raising more than enough money to pay off the massive MTA budget gap, which will obviously require fare hikes, especially since the MTA swears it will not hike fares.

Investment. Real estate. Transportation. Entrepreneurship. Old people. These words, taken together, spell Strength For America. As long as you don't trust the credit rating agencies.

Or drink the water.
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Not sure who started all these rumors about how "there's a recession" and "nobody's getting cash any more," because, hey, whoa, do you even read the papers these days? We do, and leisurely, thanks to the life of leisure afforded by our ample supply of money. Do you know what rich man Richard Branson is up to this week? He is launching tourists into space, on a rocket, for a quarter million dollars each! Does that sound like a recession-plagued business, to you?

It should not. Here is another thing: a new yacht described as a "space-aged pleasure boat, a 124-foot-wide floating mansion with room for 12 guests and a crew of 20." (Pictured: The inside of a freaking yacht). Space age, yes; recession age, no. It takes money to run a yacht like that. Money that is existing right now in the economy!

A government employee has been calling in sick all year long, but he's still collecting his salary. That's money! Some high school kid got $100k just for doing a science fair project. That's money! A thousand London bankers are quitting their jobs at the Royal Bank of Scotland rather than give in to the tyranny of government cutbacks in their bonuses. That is the distinct scent of money wafting across the seas!

So we say ¡no mas! to the whining about not having any money. Buy a rocket, or build a yacht, or be a banker, and go out and get it. Motivate!

Unemployment: If it goes any lower, why, it won't even be 10%, officially, and we would barely be losing jobs every month, at all! That's good news for America and for American families.

Which is not to say everything is peachy, exactly. Our plan to scalp tickets for the NBA co-champion Knicks and Nets is not working out so hot, for some reason. And the Off Track Betting thing? We thought that was a sure winner. Who ever went bankrupt on gambling, right? Well, OTB did.

But we're pursuing alternate strategic visions for economic enrichment. When the whole "Fancy Parisian restaurant that's been around for more than 400 years" thing wasn't paying off, we asked ourselves, "Why not auction off some of that wine that's filling up the cellar of this place?" So we did. And we got some money. That's how it is.

Always have a backup plan. Before you know it, the economy won't be losing any jobs at all. Then what's your excuse?
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Used to be that Harvard Law would "waive tuition for third-year students who pledge to spend five years working for nonprofit organizations or for the government," so it was like, hey, perfect, free supply of attorneys for the CIA! But now they've suspended that program just because their endowment lost billions and billions and billions of dollars.

The rule of law is gone now. And how are future generations of corporate litigators to pay? Let's say, for example, you're the average American today: A suburbanite who moved out to some godforsaken farmland in search of a mythical pure rural life living off the land. What would you do when that Harvard bill came? First you'd have to learn how to farm, cause let's be honest, you know nothing about food except how to order from Sonic!, which is simply to quote those funny commercials directly into the drive-thru mouthpiece, and the people know what you want.

Next you'd have to somehow translate that "food" you grew into money. Which is not that easy now that the entire US restaurant industry is back on the barter system. The average tip for a working waitress is now an "IOU one free car wash" certificate, drawn by hand on a tablecloth. And deli owners have been reduced to giving away bread for free to robbers and hoping that one day years later the robber repays them with interest to salve his guilty soul.

Bottom line, let's all feel sorry for Harvard Law students.
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Two brothers so poor they're living in a cave outside Budapest just found out that their "long lost grandmother" may have left them a fortune worth more than $6 billion. How you like them now, ladies? "If all of this works out, it will certainly make up for the life we have had until now . . . No women would look at us living in a cave," one brother said.

Ooooo, but everything changes when $6 billion comes in the picture, eh? Gurl U no U rong. Before I was a caveman billionaire, I was just a caveman. Before I was a caveman billionaire, I was one of 11,000 people applying for 400 jobs at the W Hotel. Before I was a caveman billionaire, I was a bankrupt Texas oysterman. Before I was a caveman billionaire, I couldn't even sell my used clothes for cash. Before I was a caveman billionaire, I owned a hockey team in Canada but sold out before currency fluctuation would have put me well in the red.

Before I was a caveman billionaire, I was...me.

Gurl U no I can buy U mad clothes now. Gurl this caveman billionaire wanna holla at U.

If you're a black American seeking a good career here, in the USA, experts say your best strategy is not "going to college." Instead, it is "Being white." That helps more than any degree! In mathematical terms, "Black man with MBA from Dartmouth" is roughly equal to "Luther, the boy who just done got out of jail for the bad check thing but that was probably the drugs done made him do it, and he's white," when it comes to hire-ability.

"Hey," some African-Americans may protest, "that is not fair." Hey, that is not the "up from the bootstraps" attitude that made Booker T. Washington one of the most beloved men in white America! It could be worse; you could be one of the many poor suckers who are working two jobs and are still underemployed, because both of those jobs happen to suck. Now that we think of it, it's likely that many of those people are, indeed, black Americans.

So, bad example.

The point is, it's all about "attitude." There is no "attitude" in "macroeconomics"—there is only "attitude" in U. Get it? So whether you get your money by bitterly auctioning off your motorized bar stool or by stealing Salvation Army kettles, just get that money—with a positive attitude!

Never let irrefutable facts stand in the way of your success.
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This whole "Dubai is broke" thing, ugh. That is certainly the last time we invest everything in a construction-mad oil-poor Middle Eastern kingdom bent on building a paradise in the desert no matter how preposterous the cost! We'll tell you that much!

It's not worth worrying about. We have other problems. Not the sweet deal I got on a Boost Mobile phone on Black Friday; that, my friends, is "no problemo" (problem). But of course the whole concept of "loss leaders" is dead when people just buy the things that your store loses money on and then they all leave before also picking up some things you might perhaps make money on. That's what retailers get for being such delicious bargains, though.

Delicious—but are they good for you? In the metaphorical sense of like if money was food and nutrition was somehow factored in there, economically? That is the question, friend. And the answer is, "It doesn't really matter if you're a homeless panhandler, because even people who are not homeless panhandlers are broke now so, haha, no money for you, homeless panhandler."

This is what makes "trickle down economics" the powerful "acid rain" that stimulates American exceptionalism, money-wise.

Where else is our money threatened? At our very own jobs as Corporate CEOs, that's where. The Communists at the Wall Street Journal have permitted some socialist business school professor to defile their pages with an article suggesting that executive bonuses are counterproductive and should be completely done away with.

Uh, not to trickle down acid economic rain on your "Viva Socialismo!" parade there perfesser, but we think you've forgotten one thing: If you took away executive bonuses and paid CEOs a salary, they would be getting paid just like their workers.

Game and set, as well as match, thank you. We're off to stroll back to our mansion unmolested by robbers or ruffians, because new statistics show that crime hasn't even gone up during the recession. For that, The Haves thank you!
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A new study says "more than 50 percent of artists have seen income drop in the last year with a staggering 18 percent of respondents reporting an income loss of more than 50 percent over that period." No shit! We're the ones out here selling homemade bracelet sculptures! The market is "soft," as we would say if we cared about economic things, which we don't.

Because art is a feeling. Specifically, a feeling of hunger. With a side of deprivation, and a dash of "damn, it's cold." That's what we, as artists, "go for." We don't go for things like big Christmas trees, which then disappoint our city by being small Christmas trees, because we're too broke for the big Christmas tree. We don't go for things like $18,000 shoes (unless we made them, in which case that would be a small price to pay for art).

We don't worry about getting fired because we were secretly shopping for Christmas presents online at work. That's because we don't "get fired" or "have jobs" or "shop" or "celebrate Christmas" or "go online," except to read this specific online column. Then it's out the "door" (imaginary) for us, off to do some art, starving as we may be, content in the knowledge that we've expressed ourselves. And that is priceless.

Wanna buy a bracelet?
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No, it's not just "Some Imaginary Trend We Made Up From Our Imagination Cause It Seems Like The Sort of Thing That Would Happen In a Recession." Adults really are moving home to mom and dad's place, because the [DREAM JOB IN MANHATTAN] just couldn't afford to keep them on.

We won't make a joke because, ha, who knows who might be next? Maybe us! We're somewhat confident now that we've procured a more stable career, though: We rented a little jug from the United Homeless Organization, then we stand at a table with the jug, see—right outside the Starbucks on Spring Street—and shake it, and say "penny, nickel, dime or a quarter..." in a sing-songy voice until people feel guilty and give us their meager change. Then we keep that money, and the head of the UHO takes his cut and pays his rent and cable bill and shit.

It's all a scam, technically. Although, what, do you want your 15 cents back, cheap Starbucks bastards? If the people holding the jugs really are homeless, well, then, it's helping homelessness, so, shut up.

It's not so bad being homeless these days. You don't have to live with mom and dad. You don't have to worry about an underwater mortgage. You don't have to go bowling with other jerks who are unemployed in order to "network." You don't have to do much at all, except shake that jug of change, and worry about how you're going to meet your basic needs without dying in the cold, heartless streets.

So don't feel so bad about your current conditions. It could be worse, economically: You could be black! Ha. Oh. You are? Yea. You are screwed.
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In addition to (some of) Playboy, AMI has the National Enquirer, Star, and zombie RadarOnline. And then a bunch of muscle magazines! Perfectly capturing America's true, vapid obsessions with unattainable celebrity, unattainable sex, and unattainable bodies, all under one roof. As for Playboy, they say that the money they'll save with this deal will let them bring a touch of class back to the ol' cover page:

Though Mr. Jellinek said buzz-generating covers need not be costly, citing a recent cover with "Simpsons" cartoon star Marge, Mr. Flanders said freeing up cash for celebrity pictorials is a chief aim of the deal. Actress Tara Reid will pose nude for the first time in the combined January/February issue.

A bargain at any price.

Remember they did like a "bailout" thing a while back, when our economy had that momentary hiccup? So apparently now our government is going to have to be paying that back, to the tune of $700 billion per year. Which is not to say we' can't do it—we're not here to worry you, or upset your mind in any way whatsoever with technical issues of "the prospect of not having money ever for the rest of your natural life"—but we need a plan here, to get this thing taken care of.

So here is the plan, without further ado: Everybody take all your money and put it into gold right now. That shit is as high as it's ever been right now and it has nowhere to go but up. Then take the rest of all your money and put it into stocks. They are totally going through the roof today and we for one see no sign of this trend stopping any moment. If you're an executive now, don't stop being one, because as long as you are, you get to keep all the money. Next, find the dude selling life insurance in the subway—his name is Eric, he's down there all the time. Purchase a $700 billion policy.

Right, everything is going swimmingly. To complete the financial wizardry in action here, kill yourself. Don't feel bad. Everybody's doing it.

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One dude whose family has had a shop in Crown Heights for 30 years goes and opens a coffee shop. Then these other newcomers go and open a coffee shop right down the block, and now it looks like Franklin Ave. could see new bloodbath just like the bad old days:

The owners of the second shop posted a comment announcing their opening and boasting of purveying organic coffee. That provoked a pointed retort from the owner of the first shop, the Pulp and the Bean. "I won't be selling organic coffee (whatever that is) but I will have really good coffee," the owner, Tony Fisher, wrote.

Hopefully guns shall not be drawn. Just wait until the slighted nail salon owners weigh in to defend their pride. Coffee shops are one of our society's most cherished Love/Hate institutions, particularly in still-gentrifying hoods, where they are essentially huge flashing "Burn Me First When the Riots Come!" signs on boulevards full of, you know, nail salons and bodegas.

Which is fine, because coffee shops live on self-loathing. As Michael Idov writes in a long WSJ essay doubtlessly composed in a coffee shop, "At any given moment, a typical New York coffeehouse looks like an especially sedate telemarketing center...The laptoppers hog the tables, but they do the coffeehouse experience an even deeper disservice. They make it a solitary one, and it's a different kind of solitude from the stance sung by Hemingway. You're not just alone-you're in another universe entirely, inaccessible to anyone not directly behind you."

Yea, that's what I thought too, until I started working in a coffee shop on a laptop every day. Now I just want you to stop typing so loud. This isn't Romper Room. It's a god damn coffee shop.
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Our tipster notes that Nancy is "just emailing everyone she knows, asking you to pass it on! So I did." As will we. No need to thank us, Nancy. Since you gave $10 million to Scientology, you need every penny.

Some pictures of the bed follow.

Way back in 2005, when the liberal media would have had you believe that everything was economically hunky-dory, a fifth of Americans couldn't even pay for their basic needs like food, clothing, shelter, and "sizzlin'" fajita platters. But all you heard about in the news was "Alan Greenspan is so sexy" and "Let's invest in private equity" and "How to make money from dead Iraqis."

So what changed? Very little materially, since all the "wealth" of 2005 turns out to have been imaginary. Since this recession hit, our nation is buckling down and concentrating on what's really important: our spiritual needs. For those of the Christian faith, that means taking time to celebrate things like being with your family and fighting relentless culture wars against gays and women. And unions! Christians are now vociferously against unions, too! Jesus was not in the Gay Abortion Union.

Should America be?

It's a question each citizen must answer for himself here in America, a nation of God. We're not a land like North Korea, where our own heathen diplomats smuggle cigarettes from abroad in a desperate bid to raise enough money in the black market to avoid eating grass soup for yet another month. We're better than that. American may have given up on building their dream home, but we haven't given up on something far more significant: J.M. Smucker Co. The latest profits are through the fucking roof.

We Americans just cannot get enough of that good Folgers coffee, Jif peanut butter, and Smucker jelly. It is peanut butter jelly time. In America. Now. And forever.
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Here, tell this to your kids: Santa is no longer reading their letters. The Postal Service is canceling its "Letters to Santa" program, because of its popularity with sex offenders. Also because, how can you expect Santa to answer these kids' requests honestly? They want a video game? They're getting a can of corned beef hash. And they better enjoy it, because at today's prices, the temptation to sell your own kids to corned beef hash factories is tempting for many parents.

Kids! The last thing you need during a recession Christmas. Before you know it they'll be all grown up and clamoring to go to college, and if the University of California is raising its tuition by a third just this year, by the time your kids get there you will literally have to sell yourself in sexual slavery to pay for it, and that is not a joke in any way, please see the Dean of Sexual Slavery to pick up the forms.

We'd swear that America is on the verge of getting the Christmas Blues. Stocks are plummeting. There are more delinquent mortgages than ever. And the US Chamber of Commerce headquarters is trying to recover from a vicious Photoshop lighting storm. We thought we could fall back on our foolproof Luxury Fake Upscale Trendy Foodie Knick-Knack Seller of Unnecessary Crap idea, but our countrymen have somehow lost their taste for luxury, and all those cities that tried to take some old bum warehouse and put in a "gourmet marketplace" thing are hearing the American people say, loud and clear, "Fuck that."

Santa won't answer your pleas. Shoppers won't save your business. And the banks will take your home. Merry Christmas, America. The recovery is the prettiest present of all.
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It's not just that your grocer may be out of your particular Eggo flavor of choice for a day or two. That you could tolerate, although you can be sure the manager would hear about it, as well as that "Corporate customer care contact" person you found on Consumerist. No, it's much worse than that. Eggo factories must quite literally be run by simians, because now the company says "We hope to regain full distribution of Eggo products by the middle of 2010."

2010. You'll be fighting like the guy in the god damn The Road for another eight months just to get your hands on some good old blueberry toaster waffles.

What will America run on? America don't run on Dunkin. Not around here. The real America runs on Eggo waffles, a strong cup of Sanka, and then the four-eggs-n-scrapple platter at the diner downtown. To remove Eggos from our morning routine doesn't just threaten our taste buds that crave that delicious crisp warm sweet Eggo taste—it threatens the American Morning.

People will go hungry.

What else can go wrong? Jiminy Cricket. That's not an epithet—it's the name of our old pumpkin vendor, who my family purchased holiday gourds from just about as far back as I can remember. He's in prison now, but I mention him because of this whole Pumpkin shortage America is having, and just in time for the holidays. I'll be dadgummed. The one time of year you would actually want to buy a god damn pumpkin, there's none to buy, thanks to too much "rain." As far as I and most normal people are concerned, you can take every god damn pumpkin grown from January through September and set them all on fire in a festive display. Just have those pumpkins ready for Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then put them the hell away. I don't even want to hear about them, after that. But don't go having a "pumpkin shortage" right when we might want a god damn pumpkin, of all things.

It's just poor management.

No Eggos for your breakfast
No Pumpkin for your pie
No turkey at the food bank
You might as well just die.

Down in Georgia, in the dark days before the recession, people used to think like this: "I am white. They are black. We are different. We cannot commingle." Now, since the recession, people think like this: "I am white and they are black but we are both broke. Why should we not pass the time discussing our common plight with one another?" Also, white people are totally learning how to get their groove on with style, while black people feel free to become Kelsey Grammer fans and eat arugula! Thanks for this scoop, the media.

Positive thinking like that is important, so that one doesn't become too tempted to do something crazy. Take a bad situation and flip it, judo-style, into something beneficial. Hate your job? Why not rob the office, making yourself a little "Seasonal bonus" in the meantime? Everyone's doing it these days! Can't get into Wesleyan? And also you are locked in prison? Go to Wesleyan in prison! Hey, it's not like you can get into community college. Laid off from your lucrative Wall Street job? Apply for a job in the NYPD! You almost certainly won't need to shoot anyone, and if you do, you won't have to tell people too much about it.

The Red Cross is broke but it has lots of old crap in the attic to sell off and raise a little cash to buy blood, or whatever the Red Cross gives out. It's just one more example of the "positive thinking" power that everyone from rural black Wesleyan students to urban white Wall Street cops is "getting into" these days. Unite! We must starve together, or else we'll starve alone.

Here's the lead to a news story: "General Motors said on Monday that its finances had improved to the point that..." It was profitable? No, finances have improved to the point that it lost $1.15 billion in the third quarter.

Wonderful!

Money has disappeared. There is no money. Nobody has money. We are all completely without money. But now thanks to PayPal technology, your "digital wallet" "lives in a cloud."

Good!

As long as most economists have lived, Mexicans have come to America to do the shitty jobs that Americans don't want so they can send money back home. Now, the employment situation in America is so atrocious that impoverished rural Mexicans are selling off their livestock in order to raise money to send to their relatives here in America, so they don't starve to death.

Invisible Hand!

In Moscow, the homeless are mastering economics and nutrition all at once: "Three homeless men ate parts of a 25-year-old man they had butchered and sold other bits of the corpse to a kebab restaurant."

Entrepreneurial!

Looks like everything's fine.