The Way We Live Now: Virtually well. Not "virtually" like "almost," like "we're almost living well again, thanks," because, whoa, not even close. We mean "virtually" like "in a virtual world." Mentally transport yourself to Affluenceville, population (your name)!

In pre-recessionary times, business travelers were provided with "expense accounts" that allowed them to "travel" to "hotels" for "meetings." Now businesses have modified slightly, so you go to the hotel "down the street" and go into the "telepresence suite" and "look at the people you are 'meeting' with, on a video screen" and "pretend" it's not humiliating how broke you are. Hey, at least you didn't have to go all the way to "Asia," which is the last place hotels are "open!"

Visualizing yourself doing something more promising than what you're actually doing is a proven way to make it through the recession without offing yourself. Pretend that your seasonal holiday job at the mall, as an elf, is a real career that will never end, just like Christmas itself, which happens every day. Pretend that you can just keep stealing money from your retail job forever, and it'll be just like if you worked for a hedge fund! If things go bad, you can always pull another daring helicopter heist. Pretend you'll have that money forever!

America will make-believe its way out of this recession yet.
[Pic via]