Retirement account fantasy and middle class erosion – 1 out of 3 Americans has zero dollars in a retirement account. From 1950 to 1989 top 1 percent earned roughly 7 to 8 percent of nationwide income. Today it is inching closer to 20 percent resembling pre-Great Depression levels.
Many Americans live precariously close to the edge of financial insolvency flirting with economic disaster daily. If you casually browse mainstream articles and watch any amount of television you would think that the US still had a vibrant and strong middle class. When we pull back the covers on the current financial situation we realize that many Americans are merely getting by and many would like to live in some 1984 Orwellian fantasy world where suddenly things are back to financial equilibrium. 43 million Americans are depending on government food assistance to get by. But many more millions are merely living paycheck to paycheck hidden in the cellar of the headlines. 1 out of 3 Americans has zero in any retirement account (not one slowly eroding dollar). Half of Americans have $2,000 or less which puts them one month away from needing government assistance. With the volatile job market and turbulent Wall Street middle class Americans are feeling the once prided stability being slowly washed away. Let us examine how retirement is now becoming more of a fantasy for many Americans.
Las Vegas is to the real estate bubble what Detroit was to the US automobile industry – Empty condo projects, apartments poorly built to face the desert sun, and the collapse of commercial real estate.
If Wall Street is the hub of American finance then Las Vegas was the manifestation of credit dreams going viral. Las Vegas, the beating heart of Nevada had a tremendous boom with the real estate bubble because it played into the narrative of making it big. Where else can unknowns strike it big and have their name put up in lights? With Wall Street feeding the frenzy Las Vegas seemed to be an endless playground of free flowing capital. During the boom it was hard not to notice the high end Rodeo Drive like stores of Gucci, DKNY, and Prada covering the floors of many casinos. The stores were full and money seemed to flow like the exhaust of Maserati’s cruising up and down Las Vegas Blvd. If heaven on Earth for kids is Disneyland Las Vegas was the heaven of debt. What once seemed as an endless dream has burst into a barren desert nightmare. Las Vegas once boasting some of the fastest growth rates now has largely led Nevada into having the highest unemployment rate of all states in the country. If Michigan was the result of the offshoring of American manufacturing and the demise of the US auto industry Nevada is the exclamation mark at the end of the credit bubble era.
Federal Reserve is the primary tool of the new financial oligarchy – The ultimate banking clearing house with zero oversight from the people still holds over $2 trillion on its balance sheet.
The Federal Reserve system (the Fed for short) is the US central banking system. The Fed was created in 1913 with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act. In the beginning the Fed had limited powers and its mission was limited. According to the Fed its mission today is to conduct monetary policy, supervise and regulate banking institutions, and maintain stability in the financial system. If this is the mission of the Fed, it has radically failed and the American people should audit the Fed to see what went wrong. The problem with the Fed is that it is independent within the government since it does not need to seek legislation for actions. Yet the authority of the Federal Reserve is derived from the US Congress. Yet we have recently seen when a push to audit the Fed was issued in Congress a major backlash hit from the Fed and we have yet to conduct a full audit of the Federal Reserve. The Fed has conducted and put at risk the US currency to protect the banking interests of its member banks. The unstated mission of the Fed is to protect its banking allies even if it means destroying the economic structure of its host nation so long as wealth is stabilized in the new financial oligarchy.
The red queen race of debt – US public debt set to pass US annual GDP. The 100 percent GDP to public debt threshold is quickly approaching.
People may not even realize that during the Great Depression, US Federal debt as a percent of GDP did not even reach 40 percent. Part of this was because the size of government was much smaller in military, public services, and entitlements. The only time in history that the US as a whole spent more than it produced was during World War II. That is the only time but we are now quickly approaching the 100 percent range of federal debt to GDP as a percentage. The US Treasury and Federal Reserve are aiming to pull the economy out of the Great Recession by going into further debt. Think about this for a few minutes. What led the US into a major financial crisis were banks allowing people to go into too much debt buying homes, cars, and other things they clearly were not able to afford. While the banks were bailed out courtesy of taxpayers, the central banks are aiming to go deeper into debt just to create additional bubbles. Bankers are loving this and their profits reflect this change. Yet as many chastise economies around the world for going too deep into debt it is likely we will hit the 100 percent threshold next year.