When the financial clock strikes zero – Half of Americans pass away with nearly zero wealth. The middle class has contracted by ten percent in the last 40 years.
A recent study demonstrates the precarious financial position many Americans find their lives in. The National Bureau of Economic Research found that nearly half of Americans pass away penniless. The exact figures were sobering stating that many of these Americans end up with no financial assets including home wealth and typically rely heavily on Social [...]
Zero effective policy and stalling QE3 – Why QE3 will have little financial impact if implemented. Deposits at US commercial banks quickly approaches $9 trillion.
The markets eagerly await the words of central bankers over the next few days. The markets are on the fence waiting to see if Ben Bernanke gives the green light for QE3. What many fail to realize is the Fed already has other mechanisms to force banks to lend in the current marketplace. First, there [...]
China enters unfamiliar economic territory with rising inventory – Contraction in China’s manufacturing sector now inching closer to one year. What does this say about the global recovery?
China is feeling the deep impact of the global slowdown. The country has seen unprecedented growth for the last few decades and is now entering into a very unfamiliar territory. Slowing demand. Data is reflecting that the slowdown on exports from places like the US and especially Europe is having an impact in their very [...]
Do not be lulled by the siren call of inflation – The slow decline in living standards. Gas is up 100 percent over last 8 years while income has fallen.
Inflation has a slow methodical way of eroding the purchasing power of what sits in your bank account. The Federal Reserve is doing all it can to create asset inflation to allow banks to offload inflated assets onto the market so they can repent for the financial sins created during the credit bubble. Unfortunately there [...]
Debt bubble amnesia – 40 percent increase of Americans with accounts in collection in the last decade. System still heavily reliant on extreme consumption.
The debt hangover is still giving the nation a deep headache. For example, in 2003 10 percent of Americans had an account in collections. Today, it is more than 14 percent. The addiction to debt is both troubling but what is more surprising is how little was learned from the financial crisis. The stock market [...]
Healthcare jobs expand servicing many older Americans with little to no savings – Since the recession started top employment fields related to healthcare. Over 10 million Americans no longer in the labor force.
Get used to sluggish growth. Although the political season is in full force and every candidate is promising you unicorns and roads to utopia if you vote for them, the reality is we have some built in challenges that neither party can easily fix. The unemployment rate has trickled lower thanks to lower wage jobs [...]
Welcome to the land of the poor and rich – Trading the middle class for economic extremes.
The extremes in the US have gotten more pronounced in this economic crisis. It is hard to imagine a country where 46 million people are living with the assistance of food stamps while 6 of the 400 top income earners pay no federal tax. I’m sure that just like most Americans you pay your fair [...]
Long live the debt ceiling – approaching the fiscal cliff by spending $1 trillion more than is being taken in. A breakdown of government spending and revenues.
History does love to repeat itself especially when it comes to debt bubbles. At the rate the US government is burning through money, we are likely to breach the debt ceiling limit even before we enter 2013. We’re about $400 billion away from the $16.39 trillion limit but considering we’ve already spent $700+ billion that [...]
US Dollar already went off a fiscal cliff – what does a falling dollar mean to US families? Masking de-leveraging via debt markets.
People tend to have a short-term memory when it comes to financial panics. Even when told that the US dollar has lost over 90+ percent of its purchasing power since 1914 when the Federal Reserve was first established, many just assume this is normal. Inflation is as common as air. Today’s purchasing power of one [...]
The other side of persistently high unemployment – Underemployment rate shoots up to 15 percent but is actually more problematic because of the civilian employment-population ratio.
Spending time examining the employment report shows continuing trends that appear beyond the headline figures. The number of Americans unemployed or marginally attached to the work-force increased to 15 percent and appears to be a new staple of our current workforce. A key data point is the civilian employment-population ratio that shows a continuing drop. [...]
