NEW YORK (AP) — For months, Americans have been subjected to a sort of economic water torture — a maddening drip of bad news about jobs, gas prices, sagging home values, creeping inflation, the slouching dollar and a stock market in bumpy descent. The combination has forced the economy to the forefront of the national conversation in a way it has not been since the go-go 1990s, and for entirely opposite reasons. So-called private label products — no-name cereal or crackers usually far cheaper than brand names — are less of a deal because of soaring commodity prices. Former Fed chair Alan Greenspan wrote in the Financial Times last week that the financial crisis — which he said would likely be the “most wrenching” in the United States since World War II — would end only when housing prices stabilize. Read More