Casino economics: How the S&P 500 endured two 50 percent dips in the 2000s and sent the middle class packing.
It took the S&P 500 about 13 years to get back to where it was in 2000. Of course the power of inflation has taken an even deeper toll on this trend. The stock market is largely a spectacle for most average Americans. It is a dramatic sideshow like going to the track and betting […]
US Household income continues to fall in midst of recovery: Since the recession started median household income is down 7.3 percent.
US households continue to face a declining standard of living. The first obvious item comes from falling incomes. Some of this is being masked by renewed access to debt as banks are once again lending money to over stretched consumers. Yet real wealth recovery this is not. The next major depressing factor for households is […]
Who’s afraid of a little bit of inflation? How low interest rates hide the real price of housing, college tuition, and cars.
Inflation is like the proverbial story of a frog in hot water. Drop a frog in boiling water, it jumps right out. Drop a frog in regular water but slowly raise the heat, and it will slowly boil into oblivion. Inflation has a subtle way of destroying purchasing power. Unless incomes are rising, which they […]
The Sequestered Gilded Age: Top 20 percent of households control over 90 percent of all stocks and financial wealth: Bottom 40 percent of all households have an average net worth of -$10,600.
Income inequality is now at levels last seen in the United States during the Gilded Age. This was a time of incredible opulence for the few while the many struggled to get by. There is even a story of a Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish throwing a dinner party to honor her dog that arrived wearing a […]