Sticking it to small business – Small firms charged an average of $3,224 per month of business expenses on credit cards. Yanking the credit card from small business. $40 billion less to small businesses in Q1 of 2010 compared to 2008.
42 million Americans work in firms that have 99 employees or less. We are often told how vital small business is to the health of our nation’s economy. Usually this rhetoric is given to us by banks and Wall Street yet recent data shows a very different attitude. Words ring hollow when it comes to […]
State and Local Budget Crisis Black Swan – California paying out $100 Million per Day in Unemployment Insurance. Detroit’s Shrinking Population Crushes Revenues. The Employment Situation at a Micro Level.
One stunning statistic that hit this week regards California’s unemployment insurance claims being paid out. California is paying out some $100 million per day in unemployment benefits. I’m not sure if I would call it a “benefit†but more as a buffer to get by. In reality if we really want to get a pulse […]
How the Middle Class Slowly Evaporated in the Last 40 Years – Loss of Manufacturing, Bank Deregulation, Hyper Consumption, and Short-term Profit Seeking from Wall Street.
Some like to think that the middle class has always been a fixture of American society. In fact, the rise of a steady and strong middle class didn’t happen until after World War II. Clearly people can’t look at the economically painful Great Depression, which rampaged the nation from 1929 to 1939 as a good […]
The Financial Battle for the Middle Class – Underemployment at 20 Percent, 38 Million Americans on Food Stamps and Little Hiring. Can it be a Recovery with no Jobs for this Long?
For most Americans a jobless recovery is an oxymoron. After all, the vast majority of Americans who pump money into the economy through consuming what they earn, typically find it harder to spend if they don’t have a job to draw an income from. It is understandable that there is a lag between a recession […]