Hollywood set a record this year that it would probably like to forget. For 19 straight weekends box-office receipts lagged behind the same weekends in 2004, the worst year-over-year losing stretch since the industry began tracking the statistic 25 years ago.

The good news for theater owners: A strong opening by Fantastic Four (see "story") during the July 8-10 weekend finally broke the slump.

In 1981, a postage stamp was 15 cents, a typical new home cost about $83,000, and the median household income was about $19,000. Today those numbers are 37 cents, about $217,000, and more than $43,000, respectively.

Remember that as you read press reports this month about "record high" oil and gasoline prices, and be skeptical. The number of dollars that it takes to buy a barrel of oil or a gallon of gas may be higher than ever, but that is not the whole story.

MasterCard International announced on June 17 that up to 40 million credit-card accounts had become exposed to fraud after computer hackers stole account information from a credit-card payment processor. MasterCard accounts made up 13.9 million of those exposed, while Visa accounts made up about 20 million. American Express cards and Discover cards may also have been exposed, as have cardholders as far away as Japan and Hong Kong.

With one vote, members of Congress could help alleviate extreme poverty in Central America, open up export markets for U.S. companies, and perhaps even reduce illegal immigration to the United States.

That would be the likely outcome of passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), a trade deal that the Bush administration negotiated with Costa Rica, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

What's hotter than summer in the Southwest, more coveted than Red Sox tickets in Boston, and more popular than Bill Gates in Seattle?

The answer is a typical house in each of those markets. A slew of recent studies show that the U.S. housing market is not just hot but on fire. So much so that some experts are calling it a wildfire and warning that people might get burned.

Graduating college seniors traditionally wear black at commencement events, but nowadays they are also up to their necks in a different color: red. Nellie Mae, the federally backed student loan agency, reports that this spring's graduates will face a staggering and growing level of personal debt after they have walked across the podium to receive their degrees.

Imagine having a president who increases domestic spending faster than Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter combined; a president who pushes through Congress the largest new open-ended entitlement program in decades; a president who refuses to veto a single spending bill, even when Congress spends tens of billions more than he had requested.

No need to imagine: Conservative Republican George W. Bush is that president. Few presidents in history-not even the most liberal of Democrats-have embraced big government as enthusiastically as President Bush has.