Bankruptcy Filings to Match Divorce Filings in 2009: 1.5 Million. 35.8 Million Americans on Food Stamps – 11 Percent of the Population. The 5 Indicators of the Misery Index.
It is a sobering fact that in 2009, there will be as many people filing for bankruptcy as those filing for a divorce. We are on track to seeing an average of nearly 5,900 bankruptcy filings a day for 2009. While some people use the stock market as their barometer of economic recovery, there are a few other “misery” indicators that show things are still bad for millions of Americans and counter the recovery talks. If you want to track a broader recovery, I would recommend people examine the five indicators of the misery index. Food stamps, bankruptcies, long-term unemployed, foreclosures, and credit card defaults are probably your best gauges to the real economic recovery.
Plan C as in Commercial Real Estate – FDIC: 115 Bank Failures in 2009. Total Assets of FDIC Insured Banks $13.3 Trillion. $3 Trillion Backed by Shaky Commercial Real Estate.
It is one thing when a few analysts say that commercial real estate, that $3 trillion elephant in the room, is going to experience trouble starting next year. It is another thing when billionaire investor Wilbur Ross comes out and states that commercial real estate is going to crash and burn. We’ve been looking at commercial real estate for sometime and the U.S. Treasury has already had talks regarding a preemptive CRE bailout called “Plan C.”
Dow Jones Largest Fall Since April of 2009: Current Rally based on V-Shaped Recovery Hopes and Sustained Spending. Credit Card Mail Offers Fall from 2.1 billion in Q3 of 2006 to 391 million in Q3 of 2009.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 249 points on Friday was a significant turning point in this rally because it came on the back of a 200 point jump just the subsequent day. On Thursday the GDP numbers were released showing a strong 3.5 percent jump. Yet digging into the data, 1.6 percent of this growth was based on front loading auto sales (the 30 year average for the auto sector each quarter is between .1 and .2 percent) and massive government spending. Yet that is what stimulus is for. On Friday however, consumer spending and income fell leading to the reality that without the government, the average American is tapped out and is unable to juice up those credit cards anymore.
How 56.5 Million Households Live: $52,000 Median Household Income in 2009 Crushed by a Decade of Debt. A Decade of Lost Wages and Financial Debt Servitude.
The recent American Consumer Survey had some thought provoking data regarding the typical American household. Wages over the past decade have been stagnant. At least that is what is propagated in the common datasets but in reality, not only has income not grown it has actually declined. The U.S. dollar during this time has been crushed as well. So incomes moving in a horizontal fashion may appear to be steady for Americans, but in reality the purchasing power has fallen due to inflation (not recently) and the declining dollar. Think of the rising cost of housing, healthcare, food, and automobiles. In the last decade, even after the housing bust, prices are still higher yet incomes still lag.