CHANGE: U.S. economy: Manufacturing slowdown the latest sign the recovery is faltering.

Related: ‘Sugar High That Has Buoyed US Economy Is Wearing Out.’

Also: Obama has only himself to blame for economic doldrums. “This week’s anemic economic reports provide the latest in a steadily lengthening parade of news that demonstrates Obama’s policies not only have not produced the promised recovery, but very likely have retarded it. As the maxim goes, insanity consists of doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result.”

Plus: Walter Russell Mead On The Death Of The American Dream. “For eighty years we have defined the American dream as an owner occupied family home, preferably with a nice swathe of crabgrass-free lawn around it. The latest downturn in the housing market is one more grim signal that in its current form, the American Dream is going the way of the dodo. . . . Part of it is the breakup of the blue social model. In the heyday of the old economy, the average American job was long term — lifetime employment in the car factory, working for the phone company or the local bank, or working for the government. A thirty year mortgage with steady payments made a lot of sense in a world of lifetime employment.” And: “Divorce creates two new households at a lower income than the original one, forces the split up of assets and changes the nature of real estate markets. A nation with a high divorce rate, all things being equal, is a nation of worse credit risks than a nation which marries for life.”