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Home prices continue to rise, according to the latest numbers in the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index. Home prices were up 12.2 percent in May from a year ago.

S&P/Case-Shiller's closely watched 20-city index found the average price of a home climbed 2.4 percent in May compared with April. The city with the biggest average monthly gain was San Francisco, where home prices jumped 4.3 percent.

Higher price tags haven't deterred home buyers, who pushed up sales of new homes in June by 8.3 percent, according to the Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development, as Mark wrote last week.

Despite the boom in home sales, consumers in general aren't feeling as carefree. The Conference Board, a private business research organization, reported Tuesday that its monthly Consumer Confidence Index dropped slightly in June. It's down to 80.3, compared with May's 82.1.

Lynn Franco, director of economic indicators at the Conference Board, said in a written statement, "Consumer confidence fell slightly in July, precipitated by a weakening in consumer's economic and job expectations. However, confidence remains well above the levels of a year ago."

Of all the contentious claims about the Affordable Care Act, few have been more contentious than over the impact it's having on employers.

It's hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on a television without seeing a story about some boss cutting workers' hours or saying he won't be doing any more hiring because of the health law.

But is the law really having an impact on the economy?

Not surprisingly, it depends whom you ask.

Opponents of the law point to anecdotes in industries with a lot of low-wage workers, like restaurants.

They also point to employer surveys like one from the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. It found that nearly 1 in 5 small businesses said it was reducing hiring to try to stay under the 50-worker threshold that exempts companies from an ACA requirement that full-time employees be offered health insurance. An additional 16 percent said they planned to adjust hours so fewer workers would be eligible for health insurance.

But now the law's supporters, including the White House, are fighting back.

They're putting out their own data showing that part-time employment is no higher during this economic recovery than during other recent economic recoveries.

That includes people working part time who'd rather be working full time. Those data show that most of the people involuntarily working part time are in that situation owing to state and federal budget cuts, not the health law. They've also pointed out that weekly hours have risen since the health law was passed, including in the restaurant industry.

So who's right?

It's entirely likely that both sides are. One of the White House talking points is that only about 1 percent of the workforce would be impacted by the Affordable Care Act requirements. Those are typically people who don't have health coverage and who work more than 30 hours a week for companies with more than 50 employees.

That's not a big enough group, they point out, to really affect the economy on a macroeconomic level. And it's not.

But 1 percent of the workforce is more than 1 million people, more than enough to make for a lot of anecdotes. There's also the issue that the administration and its allies are looking back at what's happened so far, while opponents are looking mostly forward at what may happen in the future.

Still, there are efforts on Capitol Hill to address one point of contention: The law defines full-time work as more than 30 hours per week, rather than the traditional 40.

Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., have introduced the Forty Hours is Full Time Act of 2013, which they say would "ensure that the definition of full-time employee and full-time equivalent in the ACA is consistent with the traditional full-time 40-hour work week." A similar bill has been introduced in the House.

The prospects for the legislation, however, are not good.

One reason is that Congress is so gridlocked and Republicans are so dug in against the law that even when there is a consensus that something needs to be fixed there is little likelihood of its happening.

And on this issue there's no consensus that changing the definition of a full-time workweek would actually change employers' incentives.

University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan, writing in the New York Times, suggested that such a change could create its own set of disincentives, with a 39-hour-a-week job with no insurance potentially paying more than a 40-hour-a-week job with employer insurance, because of subsidies available for health insurance in the new health exchanges.

I read the other day that 16,000 people have been recruited as volunteers for next year's Super Bowl in New Jersey, and suddenly it occurred to me: the Super Bowl is one of the great financial bonanzas of modern times. From the players to the networks to the hotels, everybody involved with it makes a killing. Why would anybody volunteer to work for free for the Super Bowl? Would you volunteer to work free for Netflix or Disneyworld?

Apparently, though, there are more chumps in New Jersey than we see on television's Jersey Shore or hear about in the Rutgers athletic department.
I mean, if you want to volunteer, there are so many things that could really use your help. Like hospitals and schools and churches and museums and libraries and all sorts of wonderful charities. Why would anybody volunteer for the Super Bowl?

Of course, golf and tennis tournaments, where the players and promoters make hundreds of thousands of dollars, have been getting suckers to volunteer for years. It's amazing how sports seduces us fans.

We can take some comfort that it's not just American citizens who are such easy marks. Whole cities and countries throw themselves at sports. Most recently, no doubt you've heard about the riots in Rio de Janeiro, where the Brazilian people are a little put out that while such things as food, medicine and shelter may be hard to come by, the government has put up billions for both the World Cup next summer and the summer Olympics in 2016.

The Brazilian sports honorarium pales before what the Russians are laying out for next winter's Olympics, though: a record $50 billion, which is only $38 billion more than the original bid proposal. Sports events always cost a tad more than the officials — who desperately want the event — estimate. And the Olympics and World Cup always lead cities and countries on by saying that the infrastructure built for their games will be a long-term boon for the country. Like Greece, which, as you know, has been living high on the hog ever since Athens overspent for the 2004 Olympics.

But, there's always a new sucker somewhere out there. The Olympics and the World Cup scramble to find novel places to go to. Like the 2022 soccer championship will be in Qatar, where it is known to be too hot for soccer. Or next year's Winter Olympics in Sochi, where it seldom gets to be winter. They have stockpiled snow there. All of Russia, suburban Siberia, and they pick a place where you have to save snow?

But, if you got the money, the Olympics or the World Cup will only be too happy to come on over and enjoy the facilities you've built just for them. Oh my, what we all do for sports.

Why would anybody volunteer to work for free for the Super Bowl?

The reigning king in the truck world is the Ford F-150, and it's been that way for a couple of decades. But staying on top is getting harder.

With new, tougher fuel standards looming there is a lot of emphasis on efficiency and innovation. On Wednesday, Ford is announcing its flagship truck is taking a step into the alternative fuel world with a vehicle that can run on natural gas.

When you look at their bottom lines and their advertising you realize that the Detroit Three make cars, but they're really truck companies, especially Ford.

"Well I think the F-150 pickup truck is probably the single most important vehicle to Ford Motor Company and arguably it might be the single most important vehicle period," says Jack Nerad, an analyst with Kelley Blue Book. "It's just an 800-pound gorilla in the marketplace."

Nerad says when Ford takes a step there is a potential that the rest of the truck world will follow. Ford is making compressed natural gas an option on the truck that is its best selling vehicle.

Compressed Natural Gas, or CNG, is cheaper than petroleum, it emits less carbon dioxide and the U.S. has a whole lot of it.

Advocates for natural gas say this is a big step toward using more of it. John Hoffmeister used to be CEO of Shell, the oil giant. He now runs a group called Citizens for Affordable Energy.

"The fact that Ford would begin to put CNG into a very popular consumer vehicle ... is a major step along the way to a transformation of the total fleet of American vehicles," Hoffmeister says.

The F-150 will run on both CNG and regular gas, but it won't be cheap. The CNG option runs upwards of $7,000.

Nerad doesn't think there's a huge consumer market, but he says large companies and city and county governments will be interested.

"A lot of these vehicles are purchased on a cost-to-own basis," he says, "and if you can get the cost of fuel down, as natural gas has the possibility of doing, it's going to be pretty successful with fleet customers."

For regular consumers there is a classic chicken and egg problem. Out on the road, there just aren't a lot of places where you can get compressed natural gas.

"Because before you will spend the money to put in the [CNG] infrastructure, you want to know that you're going to be able to sell enough [CNG] to enough vehicles to pay the bill," says Hoffmeister.

But Hoffmeister says a popular vehicle like the F-150 taking natural gas could help spark the building of the missing infrastructure.

Environmentalists though aren't on board with using natural gas because of the controversial way much of the gas is extracted — through hydraulic fracturing or "fracking."

Roland Hwang with the Natural Resources Defense Council says he's not opposed to the fuel, but he doesn't like how the U.S. is getting it.

"When you look at that F-150 or whatever vehicle in the showroom, you're thinking about whether [it] is a good choice for the environment," Hwang says. "You got to keep in mind and you got to ask the question [of] how this fuel is being produced. Is it better or is it just different?"

But the automakers are under pressure to increase fuel economy and it's not that hard to adapt current engines to run on compressed natural gas. So that's why you'll soon be seeing them in showrooms.

But it's not clear yet whether average consumers are ready to step up and pay thousands of dollars extra for a natural gas option.