A shadow inflation hits shoppers through economic sleight of hand: Inflation and the hidden side of finances.
Anyone that shops realizes that the price of goods has only gone up. Yet by how much is deceiving by economic chicanery. The Federal Reserve has taken a baseball bat to the US dollar and the purchasing power of what Americans carry in their wallet. Yet many Americans have been duped into thinking inflation has only been occurring at a moderate pace. Those that already know about the insidious side of a crushing dollar are college students and those having to pay medical bills.  However shoppers at grocery stores are seeing the hidden cost of inflation through innovative ways of repacking items and giving you less while trying to convince you psychologically that you are still getting the same. The cost of high fuel is being passed on through the supply chain channels and a lower dollar simply means you have less purchasing power. How much less is a matter of how carefully you look at the label.
The old get wealthier and the young get poorer.
This recession has been unmercifully brutal on younger Americans. Many are entering the most difficult employment market in generations with a flood of low wage jobs saddled with record levels of student debt. Many have never even witnessed how it is to live in a bull stock market.   Of course this is assuming they had money to invest since 37 percent have no net worth or even worse, a negative net worth. Even for the cautious minded, they are only able to garner a 0 percent savings rate as the Federal Reserve continues to implement a quantitative easing policy to rescue the banking sector. The data on net worth for US households is disturbing since it highlights a deterioration of the middle class. It is no surprise that this recession has caused many younger Americans to move back home with parents primarily because of the inability to find work and many that do find work find that it is part of the low wage growth sectors.
How does an America with no middle class look like? Bureau of Labor and Statistics projects top two jobs for the next decade will pay roughly $20,000 a year. Approval rating of Congress at 10 percent. In comparison, Americans approved of BP’s handling of the Gulf oil crisis at a 16 percent rate.
A strong middle class has been at the core of what has been promoted as the American Dream. How would America look like if the middle class simply vanished? We may not need to wait too long at the current rate since we are quickly siphoning people off the middle class and throwing them into lower income brackets. The vast majority of Americans do not buy into the propaganda promoted on the tightly controlled media outlets. In fact, the latest Congressional job approval numbers are at a record low of 10 percent according to Gallup. To put this low figure in perspective 16 percent of Americans approved of how BP handled the catastrophic Gulf oil spill at the peak of the blowout. This low Congressional approval is all coming during a supposed economic recovery where 46,000,000 Americans receive a monthly charge to their debit card for food assistance. Even government figures show the big job growth sectors of the next decade to be in low paying fields. What would America look like without a middle class?
The crisis of solvency – peak debt, peak food stamp usage, and massive financial deception by media. The faux economy of solving a solvency issue with more debt. Job postings up but hiring flat.
The economy is largely running on a solid amount of debt, Orwellian news, and selective perception. Take for example the absolute lack of coverage on our peak debt situation. The media simply assumes that going over the $15 trillion mark on national debt was somehow a story not worth reporting. The total amount we have taken on in borrowing is larger than our annual GDP yet countries around the world are being chastised for this exact problem. Or what about the peak number of Americans now on food stamps? One out of every seven men, women, and children is now on food assistance at well over 46,000,000. You get food assistance when you are economically scraping by. Yet the media is largely absent on this story. We are living in a crisis of solvency and much of the recent recovery is simply a choice of ignoring glaring issues of solvency.