The following articles are all current “opinions” of economic conditions in the United States. As our stock market rises again today on news that the European Central Bank is cranking up the printing presses, the perception of recovery is much different than the reality of redistribution of wealth through devaluation of fiat currencies.
David DeGerolamo
What Is Your Financial Breaking Point?
Many people realize that the financial situation in the U.S. is deteriorating, yet these same people continue on with their daily lives assuming things will get better or will not affect them. Those that still have a stream of income are in much better shape than many but they have not thought about the reality of losing that income and what will follow. Those that have lost their income but still have sufficient savings to live on have not thought about the day when that money runs out and what will follow.
When things don’t go as planned, many people refuse to think about the inevitable circumstances that will ultimately follow when they run out of money. This is just so far outside of their comfort zone they refuse to think about it and hope it goes away. You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. If your financial situation continues to deteriorate, what will you do?
In boost for Obama, U.S. getting more optimistic: Reuters/Ipsos poll
Americans are becoming more optimistic about the direction of the country, giving a boost to President Barack Obama in the final stretch of the race for the White House, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Wednesday.
…
“It’s good news for Obama, frankly, because the more people who think things are going in the right direction now, the easier it will be for him to get re-elected,” said Ipsos pollster Julia Clark.
“As that number begins to creep up, it’s all good news for the party in power.”
The Pauperization Of America
It’s been an unrelenting process. Survey after survey—most recently “The Lost Decade of the Middle Class“—has shown that wages haven’t kept up with inflation since the wage peak in 2000. Periods when real wages rose, for example during the deflationary stretch between March and October 2009, a godsend for struggling workers, were stepped out by the Fed, like nasty brushfires. So, families ended up making less at the end of the decade than at the beginning, a phenomenon not seen in the US since World War II. And the middle-income tier actually shrank in size—the process of hollowing out the American middle class.
But there is a new phenomenon: a ballooning lower class. It now engulfs 32% of all adults. In America! Where lower class is the unmentionable class, the class that doesn’t exist, just like the upper class doesn’t exist, but for different reasons.
Political candidates trip all over each other to promise debt-funded goodies and tax cuts—real or imaginary—to the “middle class.” They all claim that a thriving middle class is the foundation of the American economy. The middle class rules! “Everyone is in the middle class,” I was told in high school by the dad of the chick I was dating. That was in the seventies. Now 32% of all American adults find themselves in the unmentionable lower class, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. Up from 25% in 2008. And none of the presidential candidates has even mentioned them.
