A week after a harsh Senate report on how derivatives cost JPMorgan billions, Congress seeks to deregulate derivatives.

For the first time since 2008, no state in the union has a double-digit unemployment rate. That's some kind of progress, at least. There are still 12 million officially unemployed Americans. Every week, we bring you true stories of unemployment, straight from the unemployed. This is what's happening out there.

When we say, as we often do, "You will never retire," while pointing directly at you and waving a fistful of dollar bills and burning an American flag, it is not meant to be taken as a jeer; rather, it is our way of soberly guiding your attention to the distressing probability that you, personally, have little chance of attaining the type of comfortable retirement afforded to earlier generations, and will probably spend your "golden years" desperately trying to live off your meager backyard garden, until you grow too decrepit to work it, at which point you will, in all likelihood, simply starve.

In America, we have a stupid system of health care in which your health insurance, which might naturally be considered a fundamental human need, is covered by your employer, resulting in a horrible, expensive, uneven patchwork. At the same time, the earnings of most workers have remained stagnant for the past 40 years. It comes as little surprise, then, that workers are willing to gamble with their own health in exchange for more money in their pockets.

Ten years ago next week, the United States invaded Iraq. The ensuing decade of war would destroy Iraq, kill hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers, and cost trillions of dollars. It was not worth it. Not even close. A new accounting from the Costs of War project at Brown University lays bare just how much blood and treasure ten years of the War in Iraq has cost. For example:

There is something about achieving great financial success that seduces people into believing that they are life coaches. This problem seems particularly endemic to the tech millionaire set. You are not simply Some Fucking Guy Who Sold Your Internet Company For a Lot of Money; you are a lifestyle guru, with many important and penetrating insight about How to Live that must be shared with the common people.

The stock market is reaching new highs every day. Unemployment is at a four year low. Companies are paying higher dividends than ever before. All the wealth lost in the Great Recession has been regained. The consumer is back! Strong banks are back! Real estate development is back! Luxury spending is back! The future is bright! Everyone, everywhere, cobble together what money you can, and spend! Buy! Invest!

In 1999, James Glassman and Kevin Hassett—two men with actual academic credentials—published the most hilariously wrong investment book of all time, entitled, quite hopefully, "Dow 36,000." (Highly recommended reading for humor value!) The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed on Dec. 31, 1999 at 11,497—but the authors, for a variety of reasons much too complicated for you to appreciate, postulated that it could hit 36,000 within "between three and five years."

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is currently at its highest point in history. Never before has the stock market been this valuable, uh, not taking inflation into account. As the media piles in and investors celebrate, the question of the day is: Is it now "time" to buy stocks?

Just when the stock market recovers and public optimism returns and you start to lose faith in the power of American capitalism to constantly repeat its past mistakes in the form of foreseeable boom-and-bust cycles that always end in massive losses, the system steps up to reinforce your belief in humanity's fundamental unwillingness to learn from past mistakes, ever. Hello, looming student loan meltdown!

Your grandparents, enterprising and hardscrabble dirt farmers that they were, could probably work their way through college with nothing more than a job as a soda jerk at the Moderne Tyme Coca-Cola Soda and Sweetes Fountainne and Heroin Dispensary. Now, though, you would have to actually be a heroin trafficker in order to pay your own way through college. The latest figures on the humongous US student debt load are out. They are not improving.

A 2009 survey showed that the median white family in American had twenty times more wealth than the median black family. How can this be, so many years after the civil rights movement? The answer, according to a new study: black people have been systematically screwed by home ownership.

A new poll shows that 85% of Americans are "concerned" about their ability to retire. Psht. Come on. Wise up. You people are being completely unrealistic. (We're talking to the 15% of you who are not concerned.)

Male nurses make more money than female nurses. That one's gonna sting.

As we spend the day arguing over a satirical tweet about a Hollywood awards show, more than 12 million Americans remain unemployed. Millions more have dropped out of the labor force entirely. The upcoming sequester deal could cause sharp cuts in unemployment benefits. Each week, we bring you true stories of unemployment, from the unemployed themselves. This is what's happening out there.

Ever since you were a little kid, you loved animals. Cats, dogs, other animals: you just loved them. Petted them and everything, real nice. You always dreamed, since you were a little kid, of growing up and working with animals every single day. You love the pretty animals, and you want to help them. Even when you were five years old, you knew that one day, you would grow up and become a veterinarian.

A temporary payroll tax cut was allowed to expire recently, meaning that payroll taxes are now removing an extra 2% from everyone's paychecks. Every corporation in the business of selling things to non-rich Americans is freaking out, because they expect their customers to cut back on spending now. The working class has just seen its take-home pay reduced by 2%; working class people will now have 2% less to spend on food, and clothes, and toilet paper, and everything else. It may be true that letting the payroll tax rise was foolish in the short term. It is definitely true that payroll taxes in general are, as constructed, a bad idea.

One good way to fix America's vastly bloated and expensive health care system would be to make our health care system public like lots of other civilized nations with higher stands of living than us. [PAUSE FOR LAUGHTER]. Haha. But seriously—until then, here are some medical procedures you don't need.

If you are a grown adult with a 401K and adult financial things of that nature, you may remember 2006 as "the year when the economy was booming, before I had to move into the box." M&A deals were everywhere! Companies were being bought and sold left and right! Bankers and consultants and assorted other finance industry hangers-on were getting rich! And so was everyone else, until it all came crashing down in a massive global disaster just a short time later.

Sales of luxury goods are booming in America; after a brief surge by China, the U.S. has regained its title as the world's leading consumer of Moet champagne, Louis Vuitton handbags, and Hermes scarves. It's good to know that the top 1% are giving back to the world economy.