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In a joint, directed effort on Wednesday, the major-league central banks in the world suddenly cut the price of borrowing dollars to forestall a liquidity crisis among European banks.

As expected, the efforts of the Congressional super committee (the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction) ended with a whimper on Monday when both sides conceded that compromise was impossible.

The U.S. Department of Commerce said that new single-family residential starts were at an annualized rate of 434,000 units in October. That’s a 5.1 percent increase month-over-month.

Italian prime minster Silvio Berlusconi resigned his post on Saturday and shuffled off into political retirement, though he remains a billionaire media mogul. On the other side of the world, the Japanese government reported a burst of activity in the country’s economy.

Greece can’t seem to form a new government to deal with its problems, but the world isn’t much interested any more, now that panic has set in about Italy.

The Conference Board released a big-picture report on the world economy on Tuesday, essentially predicting that it’s going to be a long, slow slog ahead.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and opposition leader Antonis Samaras have apparently cobbled together a deal for a “unity government” that might let the bailout of Greece by the more affluent euro-zone nations go forward.