There is gloom and then there is doom. We Americans have plenty of reason for the former as we say goodbye to summer on this holiday weekend on which I am told the last gin and tonic of the season is consumed by those so inclined. Confidence in the economy is plunging at the fastest rate since the collapse of Lehman Brothers; the national debt is rising as spending in this period of supposed austerity easily tops last year’s; a recent blip notwithstanding, house prices are somewhere between stagnant and falling; foreclosures are up and home sales are down despite historically low interest rates; share prices fluctuate wildly; a vast majority feels America is on the wrong track; and economists are scrambling to lower their growth forecasts, and not by a little bit.

The final shard in the broken dream of a prosperous America is the jobs market: for the first time since February 1945 the economy did not create a single net new job in August. Preliminary job creation figures for the past two months were revised down by 58,000. Average hourly earnings fell, the unemployment rate is stuck at 9.1%, and 25 million Americans, 16.2% of the work force, are looking for full time work. Gloom enough to satisfy the most pessimistic of us.