A number of economic indicators are due out this week, including existing and new home sales, and 2nd quarter GDP figures — all are expected to plummet. Charlie Herman, economics editor for The Takeaway and WNYC Radio, is describing this as a "slowdown" this week: "Right now, we're in the slow days of summer. The president is on vacation and Congress is in recess," he says.

Thousands of pages of Senator Ted Kennedy’s FBI file were released yesterday, 9 months after he died. This is just the first installment of the file, but it covers some of the most interesting years of Kennedy’s life, from 1961, when his brother was president, to 1985, five years after Kennedy’s own failed run for the White House. There are all sorts of gems in the file: unverified claims and documentation of countless threats — some more serious than others — made against the last surviving Kennedy brother.