Gallery: The 9 Craziest Celebrity Insurance Policies

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America's road to economic recovery has been long and slow -- and uneven. Some parts of the country are doing a lot worse than others. It's a pattern that shows up in the unemployment numbers, poverty rates, and of course foreclosures. But if you want a quick, simple gauge of how any part of the U.S. is doing economically, just look at its median household income.

Even when you factor in cost-of-living differences, it's clear: Those who live in the metropolitan areas with the lowest median household incomes are doing significantly worse than their fellow citizens. Five of the 10 cities with the highest poverty rates also are among the 10 cities with lowest median income, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Many are in Appalachia, which has historically struggled with poverty and where heavy industry has been in decline. Others are concentrated along the U.S.-Mexico border, where joblessness and high poverty rates go hand in hand.

These are the poorest cities in America.

Gallery: America's Poorest Cities

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A new Gallup poll reports that "Fewer Americans had access to basic life necessities in September. The nation's Basic Access Index score fell to 81.4 last month - on par with the 81.5 measured in February and March 2009 amid the recession." This is a testament to the high unemployment levels of the past four years. The fact that the economy does not bleed jobs at the rate of 500,000 a month as it was in early 2009 does not help those who have lost jobs and not regained them. Some would say the joblessness trouble in the U.S. is not getting worse. That only means that the recession, which is still a horrible fact of the lives of most Americans, had not improved at all.

The two largest drops in "basics" are the number of people with a personal doctor, down 4.2% to 78.3% in September compared to September 2008. The number of Americans with health insurance coverage has dropped by 3.6% to 83.3% over the same period. At some point, the ability of hospitals and doctors to operate in current numbers falters. The same is probably true with expensive medical R&D. The government will only fund so much of it, particularly in an age of austerity. Private donations are low because even the well-to-do have cut back charity.

The current recession does not feel like one. It is worse than that.

Methodology: Results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey Sept. 1 - 30, 2011, with a random sample of 29,313 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, selected using random-digit-dial sampling.

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Gallup researchers report that "Full-time workers in the U.S. who are overweight or obese and have other chronic health conditions miss an estimated 450 million additional days of work each year compared with healthy workers - resulting in an estimated cost of more than $153 billion in lost productivity annually."

The obesity epidemic raises health care costs, which get passed along to insurance companies and the families of the obese. The loss of productivity pressures corporate profit margins, which are already pressed by a weak economy. Obesity is one of the few things damaging the economy that could be changed.

The obese are not expected to carry their own weight in terms of what they pay for insurance. They cost the system more, so they should pay more into insurance pools. That would give those who are overweight some incentive to lose weight. Of course, the other side of it is that anyone who has to pay more for insurance has less discretionary income. For obese people that means less money for food and drink. Insurance company earnings and general productivity would be helped by a drop in the number fat persons. Fast food chains like McDonald's (MCD) would be hurt. It is hard to calculate, on balance, how much a drop in fast food sales would hurt the overall economy.

Obesity is one of several things that costs society money and are based on decisions made by individuals. Drug use, alcohol abuse and smoking are among them. There have never been any financial penalties for these habits beyond sin taxes.

The government and many companies have budget problems now. It is not obvious to most that the habits that cause obesity are part of the problem. Tax the obese and the government makes more money. Or, people go on diets and become more productive.

Methodology: These findings are based on Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index data collected between Jan. 2 and Oct. 2, 2011. Gallup surveyed 109,875 full-time employees - those who work at least 30 hours per week - during this time period.

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Across the U.S., the prices of a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.408 on average Tuesday, according to AAA. That's a sharp drop from the $3.662 a gallon price that prevailed a month ago. Gas prices have finally begun to reflect the falling price of oil, which is down from nearly $100 a barrel in July to less than $78 now.

Oil prices have declined primarily due to concerns that a rapid slowdown in the global economy will undermine demand. That widespread weakness should continue to put downward pressure on gas prices as oil moves through refineries, a process that takes weeks.

Premium gas has fallen, too, from $4.265 to $4.024 over the past month, and should dip below the $4 a gallon barrier soon. That's good news for owners of expensive sports cars and luxury vehicles.

The general theory is that low gas prices help stimulate the economy: As household expenses for driving fall, that money gets reassigned to other purchases, boosting overall demand. That's almost certainly true. The Department of Transportation and the Energy Information Administration report the average U.S. household purchases slightly more than 1,100 gallons of gasoline per year. With the American median household income just below $50,000 before taxes, fluctuations in the price of gas meaningfully affect the ability of consumers to spend or, alternatively, save or pay down debt.

This gas price decline couldn't come at a better time for the U.S. economy. The holiday sales season will begin within a few weeks. Many retailers count on sales in the final two months of the year for all of their annual profits. These retailers add jobs based on revenue forecasts, and many large retail firms have already done so. Their ability to keep those people employed beyond the end of the year will depend on whether shoppers fill malls and stores between now and year's end.

Low gas prices won't keep the U.S. out of a new recession -- but they'll help.

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More people have been selling their gold jewelry in the past year, many to cover expenses, others to just to take advantage of record high prices. Silver is part of the sales rush as well. Prices have dipped a bit from their recent peaks -- gold is down from an all-time high of $1,917 to $1,655 -- but old gold bracelets and silver dinner settings may be the best way to make money in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Sales of personal gold and silver should accelerate now for several reasons. While personal need may be the motivation for sellers, for investors, the temporarily lower precious metals prices may offer a chance to get in on the market at relatively reasonable entry point. The pressure on gold prices likely will be more up than down over the next quarter or longer, even with so many people in need of money adding their personal treasures to the supply. A demand-based rally may even encourage sales as those people cash in.

Here are six reasons gold will rise again:

1. Gold remains a safe haven investment. If the stock market continues its sell-off, gold prices are likely to rise back to record levels as people move out of the equities market.

2. Gold demand outside the U.S. is increasing, especially in the two most populous nations in the world: India and China. With 2.5 billion people between them, their markets for gold are tremendous and growing.

3. Central banks have increased gold buying, which may hit its highest level in two decades. According to the Financial Times, "Mexico, Russia, South Korea and Thailand have all made large purchases this year, in a move to reduce their exposure to the dollar."

4. A number of industries still require gold, among them the electronics, medical and auto industries.

5. The economy is deteriorating throughout the U.S., the EU and Japan. That means holdings in sovereign debt have become more risky. The best sign of this is the loss of America's AAA rating. That means one more asset class has lost some of its safety.

6. Gold is an asset that many very wealthy families use to create a financial and savings buffer. Such high net worth people will probably hold gold long-term because it's one form of "currency" that will always have value. As wealthy people hold gold reserves, supplies will remain tight.

People compelled by circumstance to sell whatever gold they have certainly could use stable-to-rising prices. Home prices continue a four-year slide, and one in five homeowners in America now has an underwater mortgage. That vast loss of equity has left many people without a means to cover the costs of critical expenses like education. To make matters more difficult, wages in the U.S. have been stagnant for a decade, and unemployment, as we all know, remains stubbornly high.

Selling gold may be the only chance many Americans have to put a little luster back into their household finances.

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Meg Whitman, Hewlett-Packard's (HPQ) new CEO, will be paid $1 a year and receive a nonqualified option to purchase 1,900,000 shares of HP common stock. Her predecessor, Léo Apotheker, will walk away with get $7.2 million severance, a $2.4 million bonus and various stock options, which could take that figure much higher. Whitman joins a list of public company CEOs who have worked for $1, plus options or other incentives. Those pay packages often accompany solid results.

The most famous $1 CEO was Steve Jobs, who recently stepped down from that post as he continues to struggle with his health. Jobs also owns about 5.5 million Apple shares, so his incentive was fairly clear. He has made the most of that by leading Apple to spectacular success.

Car company CEO Lee Iacocca said he would work for $1 in 1978 when the company he helmed, Chrysler, had to borrow money from the U.S. The tiny cash compensation did not keep him from turning around the manufacturer, which is matched only by Ford's (F) turnaround three years ago.

Oddly enough, Ford CEO Alan Mulally said he would work for $1 in 2008 if his company had to take any government bailout money. It did not, but the gesture got Ford some goodwill, and Mulally saved the number one U.S. car company from the Chapter 11 fate that General Motors (GM) and Chrysler could not avoid.

Another successful CEO who worked for $1 was Eric Schmidt of Google (GOOG), who, along with founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, took the tiny pack packages in 2005. Brin and Page are billionaires because of Google's success, and Schmidt, who was recently replaced by Page as CEO, is fabulously wealthy.

Meg Whitman certainly won't be pinching pennies with the $1 salary. She made hundreds of millions of dollars when she was CEO of eBay (EBAY). But she spent tens of millions of dollars of that on her failed campaign to become California's governor. If she does a good job at HP, she may earn enough to replace all of that.

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The policies of departed Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Leo Apotheker helped cost investors $50 billion in market value as the tech company's stock dropped from a 52-week high of $49.49 to its current price of $23.19. Now, the board wants to create a plan that could well keep the price of the stock low for some time.

According to the Wall Street Journal, HP has hired Goldman Sachs (GS) to set up a series of protective measures to stop activist investors from taking large positions in its stock with the intent to force change at the company or force it to sell assets. The paper reported that "Analysts have said HP's seeming lack of direction, the management-related instability, as well as the potential for restructuring its portfolio of hardware and software assets, make the company an attractive target for investor activism."

Why should the HP board take such an action? Why does management think it can do a better job reversing the slide in HP's stock than an outsider can? The answer to both questions is a puzzle.

The appointment of a new CEO, Meg Whitman, the former chief of eBay (EBAY) has not helped increase the share price. Many analysts think she lacks the background to run a huge, complex tech company. Other investors are concerned that HP's problems are too complicated for anyone to solve in the short term. Still, other investors believe the HP board essentially runs the company and that it is so dysfunctional that its actions have been counterproductive, at best.

HP is an ideal candidate to be broken apart. Apotheker essentially admitted as much when he suggested that the company sell or spin out its PC division. It is the largest PC operation in the world, but its operating margins are not as good as other HP divisions.

A look at HP's 10-Q shows that the company has four operating divisions plus a financial arm. One of the two largest divisions, along with PCs, is called Services. It is basically the remains of tech consulting operation EDS, which former CEO Mark Hurd bought in 2008 for $13.9 billion. The division is the most profitable at HP. It has operating income of $1.2 billion in the quarter that ended on July 31. It is hard to see how the consulting arm is related to HP's printer, software, or PC operations. The theory is that consultants help sell a company's hardware and software products. The lack of top line growth at HP in the past year challenges the idea that the consulting synergy works.

HP's board may implement a "poison pill" or some other way to keep an activist investor from forcing HP to break the company apart or to issue a special, large dividend. Yet, investors might be better off if the board handed the keys to the company to an outsider. They have come as close to ruining the tech firm as possible.

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Hyundai (HYMTF) and its stablemate Kia have been taking U.S. auto market share gradually, bit by bit, for more than two decades. Lately, though, those chunks have gotten bigger, as the low-priced, high-quality car firm has begun to poach more domestic sales from Japanese manufacturers. And the trend is accelerating. The South Korean car makers' sales are expected to surge almost 25% in September compared to the same month year ago, according to research firm Truecar.

Hyundai and Kia are projected to sell more than 95,000 cars and light trucks in the U.S. this month. That would put the duo ahead of Nissan (NSANY), which is expected to sell 89,000, and slightly ahead of Honda (HMC), which has been the Japanese value-car leader for years. Sales of Japanese cars have been limited due to production slowdowns caused by the earthquake in March.

Hyundai's and Kia's combined sales are moving within striking distance of Chrysler, the No. 3 U.S. car company, which is expected to sell 120,000 cars and light vehicles this month. If Truecar's projection is correct, Hyundai and Kia will have a 9.1% share of domestic sales, up from 8% in September 2010.

How are the South Korean manufacturers doing it? First, the company has earned a share of the quality image that was once Toyota's (TM) signature. Hyundai's flagship Equus luxury model recently won the J.D. Power award for large premium cars in the 2011 Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout category. The Hyundai Azera received the top award for best large car in the Ideal Vehicle Awards given by AutoPacific.

Hyundai has also been clever about how it markets its trade-in and warranty features. The firm's Assurance Trade-In Value Guarantee sets prices for cars traded in during the 24th to 48th months they're owned. The manufacturer also has a 10-year power train warranty. It is impossible to say what these programs cost the South Korean firm compared to warranty programs offered by their competition, but Hyundai/Kia is clearly willing to make such investments to keep gaining market share.

The domestic car market isn't growing as quickly as it was in the early part of the year, and several car companies cut their estimates for total domestic vehicles sales. Ford (F) recently dropped its forecast for U.S. 2011 sales to less than 13 million. But Hyundai/Kia continues to invest in efforts to earn market share now, so it will be positioned to capitalize when the U.S. auto sales rebound picks up speed again.

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The S&P 500 is precariously close its 52-week low. If it breaks below that number, how much further might it fall? Recent history suggests the possibility of a long drop.

The S&P index is trading at 1,136, against a 52-week high of $1,371 and a low of $1,102. It topped $1,353 just a little over two months ago. Since then, stocks have sunk due to concerns about the possibility of a new recession and worries about a collapse of the debt markets in some of the eurozone's most economically fragile nations.

A return to recession appears more likely by the day. U.S. consumer confidence is near lows last seen two years ago. Last week, stock markets dropped the most they have, on a weekly basis, since 2008. Unemployment numbers have barely improved over the past three months. And the the housing market shows no signs of improvement. Some economists believe prices won't recover in certain markets for years.

Since the stock market hit its cyclic nadir in spring 2009, the backbone of its long rally has been strengthening corporate earnings. Those gains were driven in large measure by cost cutting. Sales have been slow to recover because there has been no strong economic recovery in the U.S., but productivity has increased sharply as companies figure out how to get more from each worker. Yet cost cutting can only go so far, and that trend is faltering after nearly four years of downsizing. While many employers may not cut more jobs, they aren't hiring much either. Companies want to wait and see whether they can afford new workers. And President Obama's tax credits for hiring won't help much if firms think a new downturn is near, because a tax break can't offset the sales drops that will occur if the economy slows sharply again, or begins to contract.

The question of whether a slowdown has severely damaged corporate revenue will begin to be answered as companies announce third-quarter earnings and offer guidance for the final quarter of the year. Weak numbers would provide another reason to sell stocks after the sharp declines of the past month.

The last sharp market dip took the S&P 500 below 683 in March 2009. If the stocks were to drop that far again, it would be a reset of another 40%. That's unlikely. The sell-off that ended in spring 2009 was relatively rapid, based on the U.S. credit crisis and the realization that the U.S. economy was in its greatest recession in the better part of a century. But the S&P was only below 800 for a quarter, and recovered to that level by April 2009 as investors saw that the banking crisis had ended.

A near-collapse of the credit system with the next recession is unlikely. Banks have buttressed their balance sheets, and most of the largest financial firms say they have only modest exposure to EU sovereign debt. Still, that leaves the current economic slowdown, which is more than enough to drag us into the second dip of a double-dip recession. If it does, stocks have another 25% to fall.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me." He was right: The rich get better returns on investment. The Harvard endowment rose 21.4% to $32 billion in the university's fiscal year, which ended on June 30. Harvard has the largest endowment of any university in America.

The Harvard Management Company wrote, "Over the past two decades the average annual return on the endowment has been a robust 12.9%." Those are Warren Buffett-class returns, and the management company crowed about how well it has done in volatile markets. That may be true, but the fund is still a bit shy of its peak level in 2007. The drop in the endowment that accompanied the fiscal crisis' stock market collapse forced Harvard to trim staff and curtail some activities.

The best performing part of the endowment was its investment in domestic equities, with a return of 34.6%. Investments in private equity funds also did well. But as endowment officials looked forward, they expressed concerns about market conditions. "Since the end of the fiscal year the markets have been exceptionally volatile, driven by concern and uncertainty related to the debt ceiling debate, the fate of the eurozone, the S&P downgrade of the U.S. Treasury securities, and indications of slowing growth in economies at home and abroad. The impact of these issues on our portfolio is unavoidable."

Harvard has a secret weapon when it comes to the size of its endowment: It has some tremendously rich and generous alumni. Harvard offers a number of ways for the wealthy to give the university money, and those include ways they can make gifts and collect the returns on those gifts for the rest of their lives. Harvard has, in order to get the most from its graduates, become a wealth management machine.

Harvard is at or near the top of most rankings of universities. The most important contributor to those rankings may be its unprecedented access to that huge endowment, which allows it to hire the most talented faculty and give them tools available almost nowhere else.

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ShopperTrak measures foot traffic in more than 25,000 stores in the United States and analyzes the data in a proprietary econometric model to create its National Retail Sales Estimate.

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SAT scores continued to decline across the U.S.,

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