The Economic Recovery Decoy: Bank Refuge and Auto and Home Sales Plummet. Two Largest Purchases for Americans still Treading Water. Number of Renters Increases by 748,000 in one Quarter.
When I hear about the banks and Wall Street returning TARP money to the government I can’t help to think of a successful Trojan Horse hitting our economy from within. The initial rush to back an unprecedented bailout for the sake of the economy actually turned out to be a strategic looting of the American […]
Tracking the Great Recession: Global Industrial Output and World Stock Markets Following the Great Depression.
How the investing world quickly forgets. If we go back into the distant future of March 2009, you would remember that on a panic filled day, the S&P 500 flirted with the 666 low. Since that day, the S&P 500 has rallied an astonishing 41 percent in only a 3-month period. Yet as astonishing as […]
Real Unemployment Situation: Approximately 26,000,000 Unemployed or Underemployed. Job Growth in $10 per Hour Jobs while $20 per Hour Jobs Disappear.
On Friday, we learned that the unemployment rate jumped to 9.4 percent from last month’s 8.9 percent. The BLS data surveys 160,000 businesses and government agencies that affect roughly 400,000 people so the data does cover a large portion of Americans and gives us a good sample size. The markets were largely moving sideways on […]
Credit Card Debt Obsession: Americans Unwilling to Give up Plastic. Bankruptcies and the Credit Card Addiction.
The banking crisis with mortgages at the center, has taken much of the economic headline news over the past two years. Yet there is a brewing problem in the credit card markets. Credit card debt is now becoming another bubble itching to burst. The meteoric rise in bankruptcies is simply a reflection that Americans have […]