The Big Change: Massive financial volatility and the occupation of Wall Street – when the middle class breaks protests will hit the financial streets. Poverty in the suburbs and rising food costs.

When the basic costs of living move up there is bound to be shocks deep in the economy.  As we mull over the humbling Census data, it is clear that many Americans are struggling in this modern day economy that protects the banks at the cost of the majority.  Let us call a spade a spade.  We are in the epicenter of the biggest financial disaster in history spurred on by the investment banks and their purchased colleagues in Washington D.C.  How do we know this?  Because no real reform has been enacted on Wall Street and we enter a decade of lost wages.  The middle class is disappearing because bankers have used corporate welfare to shield themselves from the brutal corrections of the markets while the rest of Americans need to get by on an average of $25,000 per capita.  Oscillating votes from Democrats to Republicans has done absolutely nothing.  Many are now taking to the streets and protestors are now marching to Wall Street taking action.  If you look at those who are protesting many are young, in their twenties and thirties, protesting what the media has failed to cover for years.  If we look at the last decade we realize that our current financial system has captured our political system and things are starting to get volatile, just like the stock markets.

The rising costs of daily goods

You don’t need a degree in economics to know the cost of living is getting more expensive.  Take a look at the performance of various asset classes for the last year:

Look at all the items related to food in the green:

-Live cattle is up 21 percent over the last year.

-Rough rice is up 33 percent over the last year

-Lean hogs are up 13.3 percent over the last year

-Soybeans are up 12 percent

-Crude oil is up 5 percent

-Sugar is up 2.7 percent

At the same time, the majority of Americans see a shrinking paycheck or no paycheck with the large number of unemployed.  When trends like this persist, economies begin to get unstable.  The Federal Reserve continues to devalue the U.S. dollar through its actions and specifically looks to aid the big banks at the expense of the public.

Poverty in the suburbs

One of the oddest symptoms of this crisis is suburb poverty.  When we think of poverty we usually think of run down sections of Detroit or other inner cities.  Yet poverty in the suburbs is growing with the middle class shrinking:

Source:  CNN

“NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Guess where most people in poverty live? Hint: It’s not in the inner cities or rural America.

It’s in the idyllic suburbs.

A record 15.4 million suburban residents lived below the poverty line last year, up 11.5% from the year before, according to a Brookings Institution analysis of Census data released Thursday. That’s one-third of the nation’s poor.

And their ranks are swelling fast, as jobs disappear and incomes decline amid the continued weak economy.”

Get ready for more of this as the middle class is ignored by Wall Street, the media, and politicians.  Look at the map above, many of the top suburban poverty areas are in California, Texas, and Florida.  Some of the wealthiest states also produce some of the poorest suburbs.

Incomes being eaten away

Contrary to the mind numbing waste that comes out from the mainstream media, we are living through some tough economic times.  A good portion of this crisis was caused by graft, corruption, and rampant market manipulating greed.  One out of three Americans has no savings so it isn’t like your average Joe or Jane created the mortgage backed securities or derivatives that are crushing the global economy.  What is worse as the price of items like food, education, and healthcare have soared the typical paycheck has contracted severely:

People don’t feel like they are doing better because they are not.  Household incomes are now back to the late 1990s yet with the cost of many things being more expensive.  At the same time, you have banking CEOs making over 800 times that of the average worker for basically ripping you off and turning housing and education into another casino.

Wealth inequality

Wealth inequality in the United States is now at levels last seen in 1929, days before the Great Depression ravaged the country.  It would be one thing if overall the country was getting wealthier but what you have is a small group stealing and protecting their hoarded wealth by robbing the middle class.  This is the group that is supporting the economy with the bailouts, not the investment bankers that largely caused this mess and continue to finance hand picket politicians that will not disrupt their order.  This is how wealth is distributed in the United States:

When the scale gets this tilted you are bound to have unrest.  How is it that the financial sector is the largest recipient of bailout funds when they are the reason for this mess?

“Just to show you how twisted this system is you have taxpayer bailouts largely coming from the middle class going to the elite financial sector so they can recruit politicians that will continue to loot the wallets of the middle class.”

The system collapsed in 2007 although as you can see from the above unappealing household income chart, the middle class has been crushed for well over a decade.  Many generations are suffering here and many now realize change is needed and people are taking to the streets.

Protestors arrested yet no arrests of the bankers that brought on this financial mess

The movement to Occupy Wall Street started a few days ago.  There are many videos online of this movement but what you’ll notice is a large and younger crowd.  Since the recession began in 2007 there have been no large criminal investigations into Wall Street.  Yet in a few short days, we have over 80 protestors arrested for simply speaking the truth.  Where is the mainstream media on this?  They’ll cover a few protestors at a local bar or pet store but don’t even bother shedding light on thousands of people protesting against Wall Street?  One of the more disturbing videos is a police officer spraying what looks to be mace or pepper spray into a group of female protestors:

Where is the pepper spray for Wall Street bankers that looted our economy?  It tells you a lot about where things stand in America today.  And support is widespread.  A comment made on the site stated the following:

“I love all who are involved. I wish I could be there. I am out of work and have not the money to go from Az. to there. I am 62 and proud of the young folks. Those my age seem dead in the head as a group. I pray this grows over time to make Woodstock look like a family gathering at the park. I have said,for years now, that change will start when the young see the big cats wear no clothes,…..and say so!

I love you all. Don’t fight or lash out. Be careful.”

Many are realizing that the fix is in.  Why keep trading cards between Republicans and Democrats?  Nothing has come from this because so much money is used to influence politics.  As we have shown with data, only a small number of Americans control the real wealth in the nation so they continue to perpetrate the current system onward, even if it is disastrous for the overall economy.

I saw a startling statistic recently about the younger generation in our country:

“(The Atlantic) New census data released Thursday casts a shadow over the long-term impact of the recession on America’s youth. During the last decade, the unemployment rate for young people spiked to the highest levels since World War II–only 55 percent of Americans aged 16 to 29 have jobs, a 12 percent drop from the employment rate in 2000. Faced with a grim outlook, many young people aren’t leaving home until their 30s–the number of Americans aged 25 to 34 living with their parents jumped 25 percent during the recession. Last month, The New York Times called the collective youth “Generation Limbo,” but after seeing the new census data, Harvard economist Richard Freeman takes it a stage further. “These people will be scarred, and they will be called the ‘lost generation’–in that their careers would not be the same way if we had avoided this economic disaster,” Freeman told The Associated Press.”

There is little doubt that this is only the first of these kinds of movements.  55 percent of Americans aged 16 to 29 have no jobs, a jump of 12 percent from 2000.  Since the recession started, those aged 25 to 34 living with their parents jumped 25 percent.  Keep in mind we now live at a time where college education attainment is at record levels.  This conjures up vision of oligarchy ran countries where people with Ph.D.s are operating as cab drivers.  Is this the vision we want for America?  Some clearly do not want this bleak future and are speaking out.

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