[caption id="attachment_7475" align="alignleft" width="300"]President Obama Signs Budget On Monday President Obama Signs Budget On Monday[/caption] First the good news: the House and Senate passed a new budget deal last week that suspends the debt limit until 2017 and increases funding levels for a number of federal programs. President Obama signed the deal into law on Monday, avoiding a government debt default and reducing the risk of a government shutdown in December.

How often have you seen a news headline that looks something like this:  “Dow Plunges Triple Digits?” Makes for a great headline, but a better way of saying the same thing is, “Dow Ends Down 0.6%.” Not quite the same attention grabber, is it?

Have you seen how much movie tickets cost these days? Expensive enough that when I went to the movies last week, I felt very acutely what behavioral economists call the "pain of paying." Ouch. As I handed my credit card to the cashier inside the plastic bubble, I wondered, "How much will these things cost in 24 years?"