Suppressing wages and increasing corporate profits: The tough math behind the current economic recovery.
It should come as no surprise that the stock market is a very poor barometer on the financial health of Americans. We think of the stock market as a temperature gauge on how well Americans are doing. If that is the case, the record breaking highs in the stock market should reflect a very happy […]
The American dream myth: Income mobility; 4 out of 5 Americans struggle with poverty, joblessness, or go on welfare at some point during their lives; and bottom 80 percent of Americans control 7 percent of total wealth.
There is an odd sort of Greek-like mythology that the American dream is only getting stronger when various pieces of economic data clearly show that this is not the case. The middle class has noticeably shrunk over the past few decades. Income inequality is at levels last seen during the wildly opulent Gilded Age. We […]
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 […]
Debt based delusion: Fed spending far outstripping revenues, balance of trade, and business inventories decline.
One clear symbol of our new Gilded Age is that of the peaking DOW while food stamp usage is at a peak as well. Even though the DOW is only a reflection of a handful of companies, the media focuses on this as if it were a barometer of the real economy. It isn’t. Household […]