Americans are about to get poorer in 2016 as the wealth effect reverses: 63 percent of Americans have no emergency savings.
The year is off to a tumultuous start. Markets around the globe are quickly realizing that hot money is going to hit a wall at some point. Many Americans are coming to the stark realization that the recession that ended in 2009 never really ended for the middle class. In fact, it might have been the nail in the coffin for the middle class. Much of the fragile gains really went to a small fraction of Americans and the financial system is predicated on siphoning off wealth from the working class. Many Americans are still living on the financial edge. A recent survey found that 63 percent of Americans have no emergency savings. Forget about having a robust nest egg.  The retirement plan for many Americans is to work until they fall over dead. While the last few years brought in spending with debt this of course was set to reverse once the market had its first tiny correction since 2009. Americans are about to feel and become poorer in 2016.
New Year begins with record number of men not in the labor force: Those not in the labor force increased by 1.9 million last year while the labor force increased by only 1.1 million.
The New Year begins with a record number of men not in the labor force. Those “not in the labor force†remains at a record level and this cannot be explained away simply by shifting demographics. Demographics alone is a convenient explanation for this large number but unfortunately only explains part of the large number of Americans not being included in the labor force. We have many going to college but as it turns out, not all colleges and degrees are created equal although most universities charge premium tuition. You also have many wanting a job but not being able to find one. The end result is a large number of Americans floating around in the odd category of not being in the labor force. Roughly 94.5 million Americans are not in the labor force. Of those, a large number are men.
The death of the American pension: Shifting the retirement burden from employers to workers has created an enormous financial crisis.
The American pension offered once by many companies was a benefit once afforded to most workers. That is, until the press started chanting the Wall Street party line and all of a sudden 401ks and mutual funds were all the rage. Who wants a tiny pension when you can become a millionaire by simply saving a few dollars per month? Well this experiment started in the early 1980s and here we are, one full generation into the plan and most Americans are entering retirement on the verge of being broke. And this is with the stock market recovering from the lows of 2009. Yet somehow, many Americans never had enough left over to invest after the bills were paid. It is interesting how the pension has been painted as some evil sin while corporate CEOs have ridiculous pay packages that would make Marie Antoinette blush. That is the environment we currently live in. Worship the financial gods while everyone that is poor or struggling is somehow a pariah. Corporate welfare for the connected and painful austerity for the working class. The pension has undergone a slow and painful death at a time when millions of baby boomers are retiring.
A recession is imminent: 5 charts signaling an oncoming recession. The market is overheated with debt and the public is anxious about the economy.
A recession is imminent and millions of Americans already live in an economy that feels like it never left the Great Recession. Low paying jobs seem to dominate this weak recovery. Younger Americans are realizing that they may not have it as good as the baby boomer generation where good paying jobs were plentiful and wages actually kept up with inflation. Benefits in the job market today are low to nonexistent and the new retirement model is work until you die. This might be a good motto if we were living in the Middle Ages. Instead, we live in a self-imposed modern day Gilded Age where Congress is bought and paid by the wealthy in our country. It is troubling that the government continues to spend money it doesn’t have yet continues to ask Americans to live a life of austerity. There are five signs that are starting to point to another recession.