The Road to Financial Serfdom: The Official Disconnect of Main Street from Wall Street and the Financial Mainstream Media.
On Thursday with the S&P 500 inching closer to the 1,000 mark it is near impossible to silence the “recession is over” media hype. Of course, this is the same media that missed the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression but here they are predicting the end of the recession. The problem of course is they do not define the end of the recession clearly. In their mind’s eye, the end of the recession means Wall Street profits and largesse pouring into the banking coffers. What about jobs? What about $14 trillion in lost household net worth? The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve are suddenly neo-Keynesians but only when it comes to saving themselves which is convenient. If you think of the stimulus plan for example, it was passed in February and had a price tag of $789 billion. This may seem gigantic but compared to the $13.5 trillion banking and Wall Street bail out it is relatively small.
It’s the Jobs Stupid: Why There will be no Recovery until Employment Stabilizes. When Obvious Financial Truth Becomes Uncommon. New Nurses Competing with Old Nurses for Hours Because of Gender Unemployment.
It should be rather obvious that without any sustained job growth there will be no economic recovery. In the same breath, you will have someone tell you that this is no common recession yet when it comes to talking about the stock market they will tell you that in normal times, stocks recover before jobs. That is true if this were your run of the mill recession. It is not. When you have five states like Oregon, Rhode Island, Michigan, South Carolina, and California all having unemployment and underemployment over 20 percent then you know the unemployment situation cuts deep and wide. With massive market volatility that has sent the S&P 500 rallying 40 percent in only 4 months. That is not normal. Most Americans intuitively know that without a broad based job recovery, there is little reason to believe this recession is close to being over.
Atlas Vacant – The Commercial Real Estate Bust: Gearing up for a $3 Trillion Headache. Increase in Vacancy Rates and Higher Defaults.
The commercial real estate bust is going to be legendary. We are talking trillions of dollars. The attention of Americans is being pulled away by massive market volatility that has seen the S&P 500 shoot up 44 percent in four months. Yet the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve have kept their eye on this market and have started examining a “Plan C†focused on bailing out this industry even before major problems occur. The new preemptive doctrine of bailouts. That is, they want to saddle the taxpayer with further burdens on some of the most speculative bets known to humankind.
Credit Card Companies Placing Financial Landmines for American Consumers: How I lost my 4.99 Percent Fixed Rate and got it Back.
Americans have a love affair with credit cards. Many Americans have more credit cards in their wallets than they do dollar bills. When 8,000,000 credit cards were yanked from circulation many consumers realized that this was a new era of austerity. Credit card debt otherwise known as revolving debt, peaked in September of 2008 at a stunning height of $976 billion. Nearly a trillion (with a t) was reached during the peak and a spike in borrowing occurred because of good and bad times. Americans were attempting to balance their short-fall in wages with debt during the recession but during the boom, credit cards were seen as a form of wealth. As long as access to debt was available, it didn’t seem like much of a problem to many.