Today, America’s best and brightest are graduating from college full of hopes and dreams, but cold, hard economic reality is rapidly crushing many of them. Record numbers of college graduates cannot find jobs. Hordes of others have been forced to take very low paying service jobs. At the same time, student loan debt loads have become more crushing than ever. The truth is that it is a really, really bad time to be a fresh college graduate. After spending tens of thousands of dollars and investing four (or more) years of their lives in an education, millions of recent college graduates find themselves waiting tables, tending bar, delivering pizzas and working next to (or subordinate to) people who never even went to college. At one time, a college degree was an automatic ticket to the middle class, but now for many Americans all a college degree means is crushing loan payments, sleepless nights and mind-numbing frustration.
We were always told that a college degree was supposed to prepare us for life in the real world. But today, the vast majority of college graduates end up moving back in with their parents.
In fact, a recent survey of last year’s college graduates found that 80 percent moved right back home with their parents after graduation. That was up substantially from 63 percent in 2006.
So why are 80 percent of our college graduates moving back in with their parents?
Well, because they can’t get jobs.
Two million recent college graduates are unemployed, and millions of others are working in fast food joints, at big box stores and in other very low paying service positions.
The stories that some recent college grads tell are so bizarre that they border on the unbelievable.
The Huffington Post recently featured the story of Kyle Daley – a highly qualified UCLA graduate who has been unemployed for 19 months….
I spent my time at UCLA preparing for the outside world. I had internships in congressional offices, political action committees, non-profits and even as a personal intern to a successful venture capitalist. These weren’t the run-of-the-mill office internships; I worked in marketing, press relations, research and analysis. Additionally, the mayor and city council of my hometown appointed me to serve on two citywide governing bodies, the planning commission and the open government commission. I used to think that given my experience, finding work after graduation would be easy.
At this point, however, looking for a job is my job. I recently counted the number of job applications I have sent out over the past year — it amounts to several hundred. I have tried to find part-time work at local stores or restaurants, only to be turned away. Apparently, having a college degree implies that I might bail out quickly when a better opportunity comes along.
The sad thing is that so many of these recent college graduates can’t even get hired for retail jobs. A reader of my column on The American Dream blog named Kate is a recent college graduate who is experiencing the kind of extreme frustration that so many new graduates are going through right now….
I just graduated college in May… Moved to a new state and am now living with my boyfriend who should not and cannot continue to have to pay everything because i just plain can’t get a job.
I’m over qualified for retail survivor jobs… so I lie on my application. But then retail stores just plain don’t hire full time. So even if I could get a job as a cashier someplace… I’d only work enough hours to maybe pay for my car payment/ car insurance/ gas…. and my half of rent/electric and such is out of the question… not to mention charged to the limit credit cards from being unemployed and student loans that will hit in just a matter of months.
Any other jobs either don’t exist or they just ALL want 5 years professional experience…. which is impossible for someone who just graduated and has been working part time retail jobs since high school.
But it just isn’t college graduates that are suffering. The truth is that this economic downturn has been hurting everyone….
*According to a recent Pew Research poll, approximately 37% of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 have either been unemployed or underemployed at some point during the recession.
*A different Pew Research survey found that 55 percent of American workers have experienced either unemployment, a pay decrease, a reduction in hours or an involuntary move to part-time work since the recession began.
*According to another survey, 28% of all U.S. households have at least one member that is currently looking for a full-time job.
For many U.S. households, the person looking for a job is a recent college graduate.
As you read this, hordes of highly qualified college grads are out applying for jobs as waitresses, pizza delivery men, grocery checkout clerks and hamburger flippers.
Even those who are able to get decent jobs are finding themselves disappointed. Starting salaries for college graduates across the United States are down in 2010.
But why shouldn’t starting salaries be down? It is the employers that hold all the leverage – not the new graduates.
Meanwhile, many of these college graduates are graduating with crushing student debt loads. Today, many students borrow 10, 20 or even 30 thousands dollars per year while they are in school.
Federal statistics reveal that only 36 percent of the full-time students who began college in 2001 received a bachelor’s degree within four years.
That is a very sad statistic.
The truth is that college courses have become so “dumbed down” in 2010 that even the family dog should be able to graduate from most U.S. colleges in four years.
Even after 6 years, that same group’s graduation rate was still only 57 percent.
Very sad.
But getting back to the point, every single one of those years most college students are racking up huge amounts of debt.
Student loan balances of over $50,000 are becoming quite common among our college grads. In fact, some students end up with over $100,000 in student loan debt by the time they are done.
Unfortunately, student loan debt is some of the cruelest debt out there.
Federal bankruptcy law makes it nearly impossible to discharge student loan debts, and many recent grads end up with loan payments that absolutely devastate them financially at a time when they are struggling to get on their feet and make something of themselves.
So what do you think? Can you identify with this article? Are you a recent college graduate or do you have a recent college graduate living back at home? If so, please feel free to share your story in the comments section below….
Without millions more good jobs, the U.S. economy is simply never, ever going to recover. But at this point, there is every indication that the U.S. economy is going to continue to bleed jobs. In the past, employment would bounce up and down as the economy went through various cycles. But today what we are witnessing is something much different. Over the past 30 or 40 years, literally millions of good jobs have been shipped off to China, India and to dozens of third world nations where half-starving workers are more than happy to slave away for big global corporations for less than a dollar an hour. In the new “global economy” that we were promised would be so good for us, the expensive American worker is obsolete. The giant global predator corporations that now dominate our economy do not exist to provide you and your family with a nice home, two cars and college educations for all your children. No, their goal is to keep costs as low as possible so that their profits will be as high as possible. For many of these giant global predator corporations, that means that paying workers as close to zero as possible is the best decision for the bottom line.
The truth is that the American people were never told that “free trade” and a “global economy” would mean that they would soon be lumped into a giant global labor pool and would be forced to compete for jobs with people on the other side of the globe.
No, we were just told that we should enjoy all of the cheap plastic crap made overseas that all of the “big box” retail stores were pushing us to buy.
Well, the party was fun while it lasted. Americans ran up unprecedented amounts of debt on their credit cards buying all this stuff, while our once great manufacturing cities degenerated into rotted-out war zones.
But isn’t it a good thing to get all these products at such a cheap price?
After all, who wants to pay substantially more for things?
Well, running an economy this way is kind of like tearing off pieces of your house in order to keep your fire going. Sure the fire will burn brightly for a while, but eventually you will have torn down your entire house.
One way or another, we end up paying dearly for the jobs we have shipped overseas.
You see, the millions of Americans who are now chronically unemployed because of “free trade” have to be supported by the U.S. government.
That means that it is the U.S. taxpayers who end up footing the bill.
You didn’t think that we were going to let all of those unemployed workers starve in the streets, did you?
Without good jobs, an increasing number of Americans are becoming completely dependent on government handouts.
Already, state governments across the United States are going broke trying to pay out unemployment benefits to the hordes of Americans who don’t have a job and can’t find a job.
In addition, for the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
Also, according to one new study, somewhere around 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010, which is the highest rate in 20 years.
The truth is that more Americans are dependent on direct payments from the federal government than ever before.
But how long can we afford to support the millions upon millions of Americans who have been impoverished by this new “global economy”?
The U.S. government budget deficit was a record $1.4 trillion in 2009. Now the White House says that we will exceed that figure in 2010 and again in 2011.
So just how long can we afford to run deficits equivalent to 10 percent of GDP?
Anyone with half a brain knows that these kind of debts are not anywhere close to sustainable.
So where is the money going to come from to pay for these exploding government programs?
Well, from you of course.
Recently I dubbed 2011 “the year of the tax increase”. A whole slew of new taxes is scheduled to go into effect starting next year that will impact every single American taxpayer.
It is almost enough to make you want to stop working and start collecting government handouts instead.
But the American people don’t need even more handouts.
Handouts are only a temporary solution to a long-term problem.
What the American people need are good jobs.
But where in the world are these jobs going to come from?
The reality is that in the new “global economy”, the United States is a very unattractive place to do business.
If you were a global corporation, would you rather open a new facility in the third world where there are very few rules and regulations and where people will work for less than a dollar an hour, or would you rather open a new facility in the United States where there are literally thousands of laws and regulations to comply with and where you are going to have to pay workers at least ten times as much?
It doesn’t take a genius to see where all of this is headed.
For decades, an increasing number of Americans have been forced into lower paying service jobs, but now there aren’t even nearly enough of those to go around.
But it isn’t just the jobs that have been shipped overseas that are depressing wages and causing unemployment to skyrocket. The millions of illegal immigrants that have flooded unchecked across the border have depressed wages and fundamentally changed the employment picture in industries such as construction and food service.
Not only that, but in this environment not even high tech workers are safe. In fact, there are some corporations in the high tech industry that have been openly abusing worker visas to ship in large numbers of foreign workers to replace more expensive American employees.
What all this means is that it is becoming much more difficult to live a middle class lifestyle in the United States.
So why did it provoke such an extraordinary response?
Well, because it hits people where they live.
Today, millions of American families are really struggling. Record numbers of middle class Americans are receiving foreclosure notices and record numbers of middle class Americans are going bankrupt.
In fact, more Americans than ever find themselves just trying to survive.
According to a poll taken in 2009, 61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
You see, the truth is that most American families are not concerned with saving for retirement or even with planning for next year. In this economic environment, most American families are worried about how they are going to survive until next month.
So who has been doing well in the new global economy?
Now, the truth is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with making money, but by any reasonable standard an economic system that produces such skewed results is horribly broken.
So will “redistributing the wealth” solve things?
No, it won’t.
At best, “redistributing the wealth” is only a temporary solution and it always ends up creating a lot of long-term problems.
What the American people really need are millions more good jobs.
But as we have seen, the current imbalances in the new “global economy” make it more likely that the American people will continue to lose millions more good jobs rather than gaining them.
Unless something is done, the standard of living for middle class Americans will continue to be forced down as labor increasingly becomes a global commodity.
So are you just going to accept that, or are you going to start demanding that your representatives change things?
Perhaps the greatest victims of the economic nightmare that is unfolding right in front of our eyes are our children. The overall economic numbers are really bad, but when you examine the impact that this economy is having on children things get really horrifying. Today, 1 in 5 American children live in poverty and 1 in 4 American children are on food stamps. Experts tell us that about 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point before they reach the age of 18. Up to half a million American children are homeless even as you read this. And yet we continue to insist that we are the wealthiest nation in the world. Well, if we are so wealthy, then why are so many millions of our children suffering so desperately?
Part of the reason is because an increasing number of parents can’t find work. According to a U.S. Labor Department report, the average duration of unemployment in the United States hit 34.4 weeks in May, which was a big increase from 33 weeks during April. To give you some perspective how incredibly bad that is, the average duration of unemployment was only 16.5 weeks in December 2007.
The truth is that when U.S. workers lose their jobs they are finding it exceedingly difficult to find new ones.
In fact, 45.9% of those currently unemployed in America have been out of work longer than six months. That is the highest percentage since the Labor Department began keeping track of this statistic back in 1948.
So is there much hope that things will turn around soon?
No, not really.
In fact, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says that unemployment is likely to remain “high for a while”.
That means a lot of children are going to continue to suffer.
That means that more than 1 in 5 American children are now living in poverty.
That is a national disgrace.
Not only that, but the same report estimates that up to 500,000 children may currently be homeless in the United States.
Perhaps we should all think about that while we are enjoying our nice dinners tonight.
But most of us don’t think that it is our job to do anything about it. Most of us have been trained that it is the job of the government to fix people’s problems.
We have created a monolithic welfare state and record numbers of Americans are now dependent on it.
In fact, for the first time ever, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps.
40.2 million Americans received food stamps in March, which was a whopping 21 percent increase from a year earlier.
But it is bad enough that 1 out of every 8 Americans is on food stamps. What is far more tragic is that one out of every four U.S. children is now on food stamps. In fact, as mentioned previously, experts tell us that half of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point before they turn 18.
So is anyone still not convinced that the U.S. economic system is broken?
So who is doing well these days?
The wealthy.
In 2009, the number of millionaires in the United States rose 16 percent to 7.8 million.
Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
The rich are getting richer as the poor are getting poorer. According to the United Nations, the United States has the highest level of income inequality of all of the highly industrialized nations.
The poor are left with an increasingly smaller slice of the pie to divide among themselves. In fact, those in the bottom 40 percent now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
But the truth is that as the U.S. economy continues to fall apart, we are all going to experience some very difficult times.
In particular, when the U.S. economy finally completely implodes, it is those who are almost entirely dependent on the “system” that will suffer the most pain. The vast majority of Americans live month to month, don’t grow any of their own food and could only last a couple of weeks on the food that they currently have in their homes. So what will happen to those people when the system fails?
And in case you think that this kind of talk is fearmongering, perhaps you should start listening to what some of the top financial analysts around the world are saying.
For example, Anthony Fry, the senior managing director at Evercore Partners, recently told CNBC that things are getting so bad out there that he is “considering investing in barbed wire and guns”.
Yes, things are really getting that bad.
Years ago the old timers would warn us that someday we would see Americans standing in bread lines.
Well, today food stamps are the new bread lines, and 40 million Americans a month find themselves dependent on the U.S. government for the food that they need to survive.
If that doesn’t send a chill down your spine perhaps you should check your pulse.
When a government has to feed 40 million people a month that means that the system is badly broken.
How many tens of millions of people have to be on food stamps before we can all agree that we are in a complete and total economic nightmare?
If you know of family or friends that are hurting, please consider helping them out. The truth is that in the end we are all in this together. The government is not going to save us. The collapsing U.S. economy is not going to save us. But if we all roll up our sleeves and work together perhaps we can make it through the difficult years that are coming.
Hundreds of thousands of college students all over the United States have just graduated and are getting ready for their first taste of the real world. Unfortunately for them, the real world is not always easy and it is not always fair. In fact, for large numbers of recent college graduates, the transition to a world of high unemployment, brutal student loan payments and lowered expectations can be extremely sobering. But the truth is that we have taught these young people to have a completely unrealistic view of the future. We have told them to take out gigantic student loans without worrying about how they are going to pay them back, we have told them that if they get good grades and do everything “right” that the system will reward them with secure, fulfilling careers, and we have made high school and college so “soft and cushy” that most of these young Americans find that they don’t have the discipline and the work ethic to make it when they actually do get out into society.
So needless to say, the first six months after graduation can be a complete shock for many college graduates.
In a piece recently published on MSN Money, journalist Joe Queenan described the tough environment that 2010 college graduates are being thrown into as they enter the real world….
They will enter an economy where roughly 17% of people aged 20 through 24 do not have a job, and where two million college graduates are unemployed. They will enter a world where they will compete tooth and nail for jobs as waitresses, pizza delivery men, file clerks, bouncers, trainee busboys, assistant baristas, interns at bodegas.
But waiting tables, delivering pizzas or greeting customers at the local Wal-Mart is not what most college graduates signed up for when they invested tens of thousands of dollars and four years (if not longer) of their lives in an education.
Unfortunately, that is where our economy is at today.
“Good jobs” are very few and far between and those freshly graduating from college are finding themselves suddenly thrust into an extremely competitive job market.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in March the national rate of unemployment in the U.S. was 9.7%, but for Americans younger than 25 years of age it was 18.8%.
In fact, according to a recent Pew Research Center study, approximately 37% of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 have either been unemployed or underemployed at some point during this recession.
But what makes things even worse for college graduates is that so many of them are coming out of school with absolutely crushing student debt loads.
But it isn’t just that they have student loans. The loan balances that many of these students are graduating with these days are absolutely obscene.
The Project on Student Debt estimates that 206,000 U.S. college students graduated with more than $40,000 in student loan debt in 2008. Using 2008 dollars as a baseline, that represents a ninefold increase over the number of students graduating with that amount of debt in 1996.
Most college students don’t think much about all of the debt that they are accumulating while they are in school.
But once they get out, the sudden realization that they have gotten themselves into student loan payments that they cannot possibly handle can be completely demoralizing.
The New York Times recently profiled Cortney Munna – a recent college graduate who has not been able to get a “good job” and who now finds herself in student loan hell. She recently told the New York Times that she would be more than glad to give back her education if she could just get out of all this debt….
“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life slaving away to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back.”
In recent years, millions of young college graduates have found that the “great education” that they thought they were getting actually doesn’t get them very far at all in the real world.
In fact, they often find themselves taking jobs where they work right next to other people their age who never even went to college.
So a lot of young college graduates find themselves wishing that they could just “return” their education and get all that money back.
But there is no walking away from student loan debt.
Basically, once you get into student loan hell there is no escape.
So now we have hundreds of thousands of college graduates that can’t get good jobs and that have brutal student loan payments that they can’t possibly handle.
No wonder so many of them seem so angry and depressed.
But the funny thing is that so many that are still in college are so unbelievably optimistic about the future.
Edwin Koc, director of research for the National Association of Colleges and Employers says that those approaching college graduation are an extremely confident bunch….
“Over 90 percent think they have a perfect résumé. The percentage who think they will have a job in hand three months after graduation is now 57 percent. They’re still supremely confident in themselves.”
So have we done a good job of teaching them to have confidence in themselves or have we done them a disservice by allowing so many of them to live in complete denial?
The truth is that the U.S. economy is in the process of collapsing, and we need to prepare our young people for the tough times that are ahead. Life is going to require an extreme amount of hard work and discipline in the years ahead, and unfortunately those qualities are not in great supply among young Americans right now.
Actually, the “real world” is not going to be getting easier for any of us. We are all going to require an attitude adjustment if we are going to successfully navigate the difficult times that are coming. So let’s not be too hard on new college graduates and other young Americans. The truth is that the vast majority of us are “soft” at least to some degree because of the decadent society in which we live. Let’s just hope that somehow we can all find enough inner strength to endure the great challenges that are going to confront us in the years ahead.
If you listen to the mainstream media long enough, you just might be tempted to believe that the United States has emerged from the recession and is now in the middle of a full-fledged economic recovery. In fact, according to Obama administration officials, the great American economic machine has roared back to life, stronger and more vibrant than ever before. But is that really the case? Of course not. You would have to be delusional to believe that. What did happen was that all of the stimulus packages and government spending and new debt that Obama and the U.S. Congress pumped into the economy bought us a little bit of time. But they have also made our long-term economic problems far worse. The reality is that the U.S. cannot keep supporting an economy on an ocean of red ink forever. At some point the charade is going to come crashing down.
And GDP is not a really good measure of the economic health of a nation. For example, if you would have looked at the growth of GDP in the Weimar republic in the early 1930s, you may have been tempted to think that the German economy was really thriving. German citizens were spending increasingly massive amounts of money. But of course that money was becoming increasingly worthless at the same time as hyperinflation spiralled out of control.
Well, today the purchasing power of our dollar is rapidly eroding as the price of food and other necessities continues to increase. So just because Americans are spending a little bit more money than before really doesn’t mean much of anything. As you will see below, there are a whole bunch of other signs that the U.S. economy is in very, very serious trouble.
Any “recovery” that the U.S. economy is experiencing is illusory and will be quite temporary. The entire financial system of the United States is falling apart, and the powers that be can try to patch it up and prop it up for a while, but in the end this thing is going to come crashing down.
But as obvious as that may seem to most of us, there are still quite a few people out there that are absolutely convinced that the U.S. economy will fully recover and will soon be stronger than ever.
So the following are 25 questions to ask anyone who is delusional enough to believe that this economic recovery is real….
#1) In what universe is an economy with 39.68 million Americans on food stamps considered to be a healthy, recovering economy? In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts that enrollment in the food stamp program will exceed 43 million Americans in 2011. Is a rapidly increasing number of Americans on food stamps a good sign or a bad sign for the economy?
#2) According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings were reported on 367,056 properties in the month of March. This was an increase of almost 19 percent from February, and it was the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing its report back in January 2005. So can you please explain again how the U.S. real estate market is getting better?
#3) The Mortgage Bankers Association just announced that more than 10 percent of U.S. homeowners with a mortgage had missed at least one payment in the January-March period. That was a record high and up from 9.1 percent a year ago. Do you think that is an indication that the U.S. housing market is recovering?
#5) With the U.S. Congress planning to quadruple oil taxes, what do you think that is going to do to the price of gasoline in the United States and how do you think that will affect the U.S. economy?
#6) Do you think that it is a good sign that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of the state of California, says that “terrible cuts” are urgently needed in order to avoid a complete financial disaster in his state?
#7) But it just isn’t California that is in trouble. Dozens of U.S. states are in such bad financial shape that they are getting ready for their biggest budget cuts in decades. What do you think all of those budget cuts will do to the economy?
#8) In March, the U.S. trade deficit widened to its highest level since December 2008. Month after month after month we buy much more from the rest of the world than they buy from us. Wealth is draining out of the United States at an unprecedented rate. So is the fact that the gigantic U.S. trade deficit is actually getting bigger a good sign or a bad sign for the U.S. economy?
#9) Considering the fact that the U.S. government is projected to have a 1.6 trillion dollar deficit in 2010, and considering the fact that if you went out and spent one dollar every single second it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars, how can anyone in their right mind claim that the U.S. economy is getting healthier when we are getting into so much debt?
#10) The U.S. Treasury Department recently announced that the U.S. government suffered a wider-than-expected budget deficit of 82.69 billion dollars in April. So is the fact that the red ink of the U.S. government is actually worse than projected a good sign or a bad sign?
#11) According to one new report, the U.S. national debt will reach 100 percent of GDP by the year 2015. So is that a sign of economic recovery or of economic disaster?
#12) Monstrous amounts of oil continue to gush freely into the Gulf of Mexico, and analysts are already projecting that the seafood and tourism industries along the Gulf coast will be devastated for decades by this unprecedented environmental disaster. In light of those facts, how in the world can anyone project that the U.S. economy will soon be stronger than ever?
#13) The FDIC’s list of problem banks recently hit a 17-year high. Do you think that an increasing number of small banks failing is a good sign or a bad sign for the U.S. economy?
#14) The FDIC is backing 8,000 banks that have a total of $13 trillion in assets with a deposit insurance fund that is basically flat broke. So what do you think will happen if a significant number of small banks do start failing?
#15) Existing home sales in the United States jumped 7.6 percent in April. That is the good news. The bad news is that this increase only happened because the deadline to take advantage of the temporary home buyer tax credit (government bribe) was looming. So now that there is no more tax credit for home buyers, what will that do to home sales?
#16) Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recently told the U.S. government that they are going to need even more bailout money. So what does it say about the U.S. economy when the two “pillars” of the U.S. mortgage industry are government-backed financial black holes that the U.S. government has to relentlessly pour money into?
#17)43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement. Tens of millions of Americans find themselves just one lawsuit, one really bad traffic accident or one very serious illness away from financial ruin. With so many Americans living on the edge, how can you say that the economy is healthy?
#18) The mayor of Detroit says that the real unemployment rate in his city is somewhere around 50 percent. So can the U.S. really be experiencing an economic recovery when so many are still unemployed in one of America’s biggest cities?
#19) Gallup’s measure of underemployment hit 20.0% on March 15th. That was up from 19.7% two weeks earlier and 19.5% at the start of the year. Do you think that is a good trend or a bad trend?
#20) One new poll shows that 76 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is still in a recession. So are the vast majority of Americans just stupid or could we still actually be in a recession?
#21) The bottom 40 percent of those living in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth. So is Barack Obama’s mantra that “what is good for Wall Street is good for Main Street” actually true?
#22) Richard Russell, the famous author of the Dow Theory Letters, says that Americans should sell anything they can sell in order to get liquid because of the economic trouble that is coming. Do you think that Richard Russell is delusional or could he possibly have a point?
#23) Defaults on apartment building mortgages held by U.S. banks climbed to a record 4.6 percent in the first quarter of 2010. In fact, that was almost twice the level of a year earlier. Does that look like a good trend to you?
#24) In March, the price of fresh and dried vegetables in the United States soared 49.3% – the most in 16 years. Is it a sign of a healthy economy when food prices are increasing so dramatically?
#25) 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 – a 32 percent increase over 2008. Not only that, more Americans filed for bankruptcy in March 2010 than during any month since U.S. bankruptcy law was tightened in October 2005. So shouldn’t we at least wait until the number of Americans filing for bankruptcy is not setting new all-time records before we even dare whisper the words “economic recovery”?
One of the great joys that men in free societies have long enjoyed is the ability to earn an honest wage for an honest day of work. In particular, the amazing capitalist engine that powered the U.S. economy for decade after decade greatly rewarded the incredible hard work and industriousness of the American people. America was known as the land of opportunity, and we built the largest middle class in the history of the world by working incredibly hard. But today, all of that is fundamentally changing. Thanks to rapid advances in technology, and thanks to the globalization of the work force, the labor of American workers is rapidly losing value. Automation, robotics and computers have made many jobs obsolete. Today one man can do the work that a hundred men used to do. Not only that, but today American workers literally have to compete against workers from all over the globe. Global corporations often find themselves having to choose whether to build a factory in the United States or in the third world. But in the third world workers often earn less than 10% of what American workers earn, corporations are often not required to provide any benefits to workers, and there are usually hardly any oppressive government regulations. How can American workers compete against that?
The truth is that labor is now a global commodity. How can an American worker compete against a desperate, half-starving worker in the third world that will work like mad for a dollar an hour?
But this is what we get for letting the politicians push “free trade” down our throats.
Most American workers had no idea that free trade would mean that they would suddenly be competing for jobs against workers in the Philippines and Malaysia.
But that is the cold, hard reality of globalism.
All of this free trade has been very hard on American workers as factory after factory has closed, but it has allowed the big corporations to get exceedingly wealthy.
The top executives at the big global corporations are certainly enjoying all of this free trade. Their salaries have soared.
In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has ranged between 300 to 500 to one.
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
That is what globalism is all about.
The elite make out like bandits as they exploit third world labor pools, while the American middle class finds itself slowly being crushed out of existence.
According to the United Nations Gini Coefficient (which measures distribution of income), the United States has the highest level of inequality of all of the highly industrialized nations.
Increasingly, all of the rewards are going to those at the top, while the vast majority of Americans are left wondering why things just don’t seem to work out for them.
Instead, the American middle class is gradually being pushed into lower paying service jobs. But it is really hard to feed a family by cutting hair or by greeting the folks who come walking into the local Wal-Mart.
If you talk to many Americans, they just can’t seem to figure out why they can’t make things work out even though they are working as hard as they can. Millions of Americans have found themselves taking on second (and in many cases third) jobs in an attempt to provide for their families.
But what they don’t understand is that the global elite have turned labor into a globalized commodity.
American workers are not faced with a level playing field. Just check out some of the pay levels around the world that American workers must compete against….
In Bangladesh, a garment worker makes 22 cents an hour. The wage in Cambodia is 33 cents an hour; in Pakistan, 37 cents an hour; in Vietnam, 38 cents; in Sri Lanka, 43 cents; Indonesia, 44 cents; India, 55 cents; China, 86 cents; the Philippines, $1.07; and Malaysia, $1.18.
Do any of you want to work for $1.18 an hour with no benefits?
But that is your competition.
Wages are being driven down and big global corporations are loving it.
This isn’t capitalism.
This is the global elite pushing us into a cruel system of economic slavery where they control all of the wealth and the rest of us struggle to survive as we work our tails off for them.
Already we are seeing large numbers of Americans becoming absolutely desperate to get even a low paying job.
For example, over one three day period, approximately 10,000 people showed up to apply for 90 jobs making washing machines in Kentucky for $27,000 a year.
Can your family live on $27,000 a year?
But that is considered a good wage now.
Actually, the folks who are making really good wages now are those who work for the U.S. government.
Yes, life is good if you are a servant of the system.
Of course government employees basically produce next to nothing except red tape.
The U.S. government doesn’t seem to care if they are productive or not. They just keep borrowing more money and getting us into even more financial trouble.
But at least there is somewhere for middle class families to get decent jobs.
In fact, it is getting really hard to live a middle class lifestyle in America without relying on the government in some way.
The truth is that good jobs are becoming increasingly scarce.
That is why it is absolutely imperative for all of us to try to become as independent as possible.
That means getting out of debt.
That means starting our own businesses.
That means learning how to grow a garden.
Many of those who continue to blindly rely on the system to provide them with a “job” (“just over broke”) will end up bitterly disappointed in the end.
Millions of Americans have already lost their jobs and millions more Americans will lose their jobs as we move along through the next few years.
In fact, with all of the amazing advances in technology that we have seen over the past couple of decades, the global elite are starting to realize that they really don’t need 6 billion workers after all.
Instead, those among the global elite are increasingly viewing all of us as a burden. They openly ask why they should have to take care of so many “useless eaters”. After all, if the system does not need all of us to keep functioning, then what good are we to them?
In fact, just over one year ago Bill Gates, David Rockefeller, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey and other very wealthy power brokers held a clandestine meeting in New York.
Instead of being viewed as valuable workers, now we are being viewed by the elite as pests that have multiplied to the point where we are now out of control.
What a strange world we live in now.
We need to get back to the America where good workers are valued and where hard work is rewarded.
We need to get back to the America where having a large middle class is an important national goal.
We need to get back to the America where we build American businesses, where we hire American workers and where we buy American products.
But unless the American people wake up, American workers are going to continue to be devalued.
Are we actually going to sit back and let American living standards decline to third world standards?
It is up to this generation to reject globalism and to reclaim the great free enterprise principles that this nation was founded on.
If someday our children and grandchildren exist in a world where they are considered just another part of the third world labor pool they will know who to blame.
When Barack Obama visited Buffalo recently, he was greeted by a billboard advertisement with a very pointed message about unemployment. In just a few words it summarized the frustrations of an entire region. The billboard along I-190 had this very simple message for Obama: “Dear Mr. President, I need a freakin job. Period. Sincerely, inafj.org.” As word about this billboard got out, it quickly made headlines all over the United States. Why? Well, the truth is that millions of hard working Americans are extremely frustrated about their lack of work right now. When you don’t have a job and you can’t provide for your family, very little else seems to matter. In fact, according to a recent Gallup poll, unemployment is now the second most important issue to American voters. The number one issue is the economy.
The reality is that the American people don’t want excuses.
They want jobs.
And some are getting so desperate that they are even putting up billboards to express their frustrations.
So who sponsored the billboard in Buffalo?
Well, it was actually sponsored by a group organized by Buffalo businessman Jeff Baker. It turns out that Baker lost his own small business 15 months ago. His business had employed 25 people, and when he was forced to close it he described it as “the most heartbreaking situation” of his entire life.
Baker’s group, INAFJ (“I Need A Freakin Job”), says that they are not about playing politics. What they want is only one thing.
Jobs.
They want someone to put the American people back to work. Baker recently explained it this way….
“Nothing else matters unless the American people are working.”
In some areas of the United States, the situation is beyond desperate. Detroit is a great example of this. Not only does the city resemble a war zone at this point, but Detroit’s mayor says that the unemployment rate in his city is somewhere around 50 percent.
So how in the world is a major city supposed to function when 40 to 50 percent of the people living there can’t get the work that they need?
The sad thing is that Detroit used to be one of the most prosperous areas in the United States. Once upon a time, the auto industry was booming and there were lots of great jobs available for blue collar workers.
But that all seems so far away now.
For decades, the politicians in Washington D.C. have allowed (or even encouraged) the offshoring of our manufacturing jobs, and now we are a nation with a dwindling manufacturing base that is rapidly bleeding cash.
In fact, the U.S. trade deficit widened for the second consecutive month in March to its highest level since December 2008. Every single month we buy much more from the rest of the world than they buy from us. That means that wealth is constantly flowing out of this nation, and no end to the bleeding is in sight.
The truth is that America’s twin deficits (the trade deficit and the massive U.S. government budget deficit) are absolutely destroying the financial condition of this nation. For years and years economists have warned that these deficits would bring about a day of reckoning at some point, and now that day is here.
We are told by the media that we have entered an economic recovery, but with tens of millions of Americans not able to get the work that they need, most people are not convinced. In fact, a new poll shows that 76 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is still in a recession.
But this is nothing compared to what is coming.
The truth is that the United States is rapidly becoming a service economy. Service jobs pay less than manufacturing jobs do, and the rapid advance of technology in recent decades has made human labor increasingly unnecessary.
That means that the “system” does not need our labor as much as it once did.
This is leading to a situation where there is a widening gap between the “haves” and the “have nots”. In fact, the bottom 40 percent of those living in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
But not everyone has been hurting during this financial crisis.
Did you know that the number of millionaires in the United States rose 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009?
Not only that, but an analysis of income-tax data by the Congressional Budget Office a few years ago found that the top 1% of households in the United States own nearly twice as much of the corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
The elite are getting richer, while at the same time tens of millions of other Americans are finding it increasingly more difficult to survive.
That is why groups like INAFJ are becoming so popular. They are tapping into the frustration of the growing number of Americans who are desperately trying to make it from month to month. The following is a short video that INAFJ posted on YouTube about their organization….
So do have a story of economic frustration that you would like to share with the world?
Have you found yourself working harder and harder for less and less?
Does it seem like you come up short at the end of every month no matter how hard you try?
If you have a story, we would love to share it with our readers. Please feel free to post your tale of economic frustration in the comments section below….
A long time ago, in an America now far, far away, the majority of the American people owned the land that they live on. The term “my land” actually meant something back then. But today that has fundamentally changed. Now the majority of the American people owe on the land that they live on. In fact, most of them owe big money to the giant corporate banking interests that control the mortgage industry. So how did the American people come to be debtors and paupers in the land that our forefathers conquered? Today when someone says that they “bought a house” what they really mean is that they have signed up for 30 years (or more) of bloated mortgage payments which they care barely afford. As you will see below, the percentage of residential mortgage debt to total home equity (housing net worth) in the United States continues to rise at a staggering pace. In fact, thanks to the housing crash, for the first time in American history residential mortgage debt far surpasses the total home equity owned by all Americans. So what does that mean? It means that the big corporate banks have more of an interest in America’s homes than we do now.
So how are we getting our land taken from us?
Well, you can thank rampant inflation and the housing bubble.
Back in 1980, the United States was pushing up towards a total of $1 billion in total residential mortgage debt. It took us over 200 years to get to that point as a nation.
By 1990, the United States approximately doubled that amount and was sitting at about $2 trillion in total residential mortgage debt.
By the year 2000, the United States had just about $5 trillion in total residential mortgage debt.
By 2008, the United States had over $10 trillion in total residential mortgage debt.
Do you notice a trend?
In just the past 30 years the amount of residential mortgage debt in the United States has increased tenfold.
Meanwhile, thanks to the housing crash, home equity has taken a nosedive. As you can see from the chart below, total residential mortgage debt in the U.S. now far exceeds total home equity….
So what does this mean? It means that the banks have more of a financial interest in America’s homes than we do. It means that we are quickly becoming paupers and debt slaves.
As you can see from the chart below, back in 1945 total home equity as a percentage of home value was extremely high (80%). Home equity exceeded total residential mortgage debt by about a 4 to 1 margin. But today total residential mortgage debt exceeds home equity and the situation is rapidly becoming worse….
We were all told to buy into the system and we could live the American Dream. We were told to get a “good job” with one of the big global corporations and we were told to get a mortgage so that we could build up equity. Well, that has turned out great for most of us, hasn’t it?
The reality is that the system so many of us trusted is dying. We are now at the point where the system cannot provide jobs for millions of us anymore. If unemployment continues to soar as it has, millions more of us will find ourselves destitute and homeless on the continent our forefathers conquered….
So how did all of this happen?
Back in 1913, the U.S. Congress gave control over U.S. currency to the Federal Reserve. Since that time, the value of the U.S. dollar has slowly been eroded. $1.00 in 1914 (the year after the Federal Reserve was established) had about the same buying power as $21.59 in 2010. That means that the U.S. dollar has lost over 95 percent of its purchasing power since then.
So the accumulated wealth that our parents and grandparents hand down to us is being constantly devalued. The only way to keep up with rising prices on land and on everything else is to go out into the system to get more of the “currency” that is controlled and manipulated by the Federal Reserve and the big corporate banks. But what most of us don’t realize is that the game is rigged to slowly transfer the wealth of the nation over to them.
The house always wins in the end.
Thanks to the greed and stupidity of the American people, we have accumulated the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world. It was a fun party while we were piling up all the debt, but now the bankers have us where they want us.
If only we had listened to those among our founding fathers who warned us about this trap.
For example, the words of Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Taylor dated May 28th, 1816 ring more true today than they ever have….
And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
The truth is that the American people are being swindled and most of them don’t even realize it. The wealth of America is slowly being transferred to the big banks. All of the interest that we pay month after month after month makes them rich.
The financial system of the United States is broken. But until the U.S. economy totally collapses most Americans will not realize it. By then it will be far too late.
We have reached a very interesting turning point in American history. More than at any other point in modern times, Americans are deeply angry about the state of the economy. In fact, it is no stretch to say that millions of U.S. citizens are hopping mad about the economic situation. Most of them don’t know exactly what is wrong, and even fewer of them have any idea about how to go about fixing things, but they do know one thing. They know that they are mad. As Americans, we were raised with the belief that our overwhelmingly powerful economic machine would always provide good jobs and prosperity for all of us as long as we worked hard. But we have come to learn that is not true. We have come to learn that our politicians and our leaders have squandered the great inheritance that our forefathers left for us. We have come to learn that the financial future of our nation is beyond bleak. We have come to learn that our government has piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world. Now the foolish decisions of the past several decades are catching up with us. The U.S. economy is experiencing structural failure, and the American people are angry. They want answers. They want someone to fix things. They want things to go back to the way they used to be.
But that isn’t going to happen. Once the American people truly start realizing that, the anger that will erupt will dwarf what we are seeing now.
Not that they are aren’t already incredibly steamed. The following are 12 reasons why many Americans are absolutely furious about the state of the U.S. economy….
#1) There simply are not enough jobs for everyone. The number of unemployed Americans per job opening has started to increase again, hitting 5.5 in February. Even many of those who are able to get some work find themselves only able to obtain part-time employment. Gallup’s underemployment measure hit 20.0% on March 15th. This was up from 19.7% two weeks earlier and 19.5% at the start of the year.
#2) More Americans than ever find themselves having to rely on the U.S. government just to survive. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 39.4 million Americans, a new all-time record, received food stamps in January. This was up 22% from a year earlier. In fact, the number of Americans on food stamps has hit all-time records for 14 consecutive months.
#3) Foreclosures continue to set records across the United States. RealtyTrac, the California-based authority on property trends and valuations, projects that there will be 4.5 million home foreclosures before the end of this year. If you figure 4 people per household, that is another 18 million people that will be forced out of their homes.
#4) As unemployment and foreclosures continue to soar, “tent slums” have started popping up all over the United States. Is this why our founding fathers fought and died? So we could all live in “tent slums” as the big fat cats on Wall Street roll around in their bailout cash?
#5) But even with all of these economic problems, the price of food is going up. Rising demand and reduced supply drove supermarket prices for 16 basic foods up 6.2% in the first quarter of 2010.
#6) Due to the exploding government debt, the American people are going to be confronted with some tough choices. According to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, the United States will soon have to make difficult choices between higher taxes and reduced social spending. Either alternative will slow down the U.S. economy.
#7) Meanwhile, corruption in the financial system is running rampant. The CEOs of bailed-out regional banks are actually getting big raises. The guy who helped bring down AIG is going to get off scott-free and will be able to keep the millions in profits that he made in the process.
#8) But the biggest fraud is being committed by the boys at the top of the food chain. A whistle blower has come forward with “smoking gun” evidence of price manipulation by major financial institutions in the precious metals markets. The scope of this fraud is in the trillions of dollars. The American people can’t stomach much more of this type of thing.
#9) Almost all financial experts agree that the era of super cheap money is over and that interest rates are about to rise significantly. This is going to make it much more expensive for most Americans to borrow money to buy a home, to buy a car, to buy things with their credit cards or to borrow money for education. Those who already have adjustable loans are going to find a much larger portion of their income going to pay interest. Needless to say, this is going to cause the U.S. economy to experience a significant slowdown.
#10) One of the biggest things that the American people are upset about is the “health care reform” bill that was just rammed down their throats. It turns out that “health care reform” is actually going to be the biggest tax increase in American history. Not only that, but because of taxes and mandates imposed upon health insurance companies by the legislation, health insurance premiums are also about to increase substantially. So where will the average American family get the money to pay for these increases?
#11) In addition, the new health care law that was supposed to give all of us much better health care is actually going to force the cancellation of at least 60 doctor-owned hospitals that were scheduled to be opened according to the executive director of Physician Hospitals of America. Why? Well, it turns out that the new law singles out physician-owned hospitals, making new physician-owned projects ineligible to receive payments for Medicare and Medicaid patients.
#12) The reality is that Americans are increasingly becoming disenchanted with the lack of leadership in both political parties. Approval ratings for leaders in both parties are extremely low, and anger at politicians is at an all-time high. The Tea Party movement is just one symptom of the seething anger many Americans are feeling. While many Americans are gathering together at large protest rallies to demonstrate against the policies of the government, others are expressing their displeasure on blogs and websites. There has never been a moment in modern times when Americans have been so disenchanted with their political leadership.
This anger is not going to go away. It could be soothed a bit if the U.S. economy was fully fixed and things went back to the way they used to be. But as noted previously, that just is not going to happen. Harder times are ahead. Americans are going to get angrier and angrier.
But there is not much that can be done to prevent that anger. The politicians who are in office when things really hit the fan are going to take the brunt of the anger, but it won’t be their fault. The truth is that this economic collapse has been building for decades. The American people are just not going to understand that the financial system cannot be fixed overnight.
Dark times are coming. It is not going to be pretty. There is going to be a lot of anger and a lot of hate. But all of these economic problems could be seen well ahead of time and there have been those who have been screaming and yelling about them for decades.
Today, America’s best and brightest are graduating from college full of hopes and dreams, but cold, hard economic reality is rapidly crushing many of them. Record numbers of college graduates cannot find jobs. Hordes of others have been forced to take very low paying service jobs. At the same time, student loan debt loads have become more crushing than ever. The truth is that it is a really, really bad time to be a fresh college graduate. After spending tens of thousands of dollars and investing four (or more) years of their lives in an education, millions of recent college graduates find themselves waiting tables, tending bar, delivering pizzas and working next to (or subordinate to) people who never even went to college. At one time, a college degree was an automatic ticket to the middle class, but now for many Americans all a college degree means is crushing loan payments, sleepless nights and mind-numbing frustration. 
25 Questions To Ask Anyone Who Is Delusional Enough To Believe That This Economic Recovery Is Real
And GDP is not a really good measure of the economic health of a nation. For example, if you would have looked at the growth of GDP in the Weimar republic in the early 1930s, you may have been tempted to think that the German economy was really thriving. German citizens were spending increasingly massive amounts of money. But of course that money was becoming increasingly worthless at the same time as hyperinflation spiralled out of control.
Well, today the purchasing power of our dollar is rapidly eroding as the price of food and other necessities continues to increase. So just because Americans are spending a little bit more money than before really doesn’t mean much of anything. As you will see below, there are a whole bunch of other signs that the U.S. economy is in very, very serious trouble.
Any “recovery” that the U.S. economy is experiencing is illusory and will be quite temporary. The entire financial system of the United States is falling apart, and the powers that be can try to patch it up and prop it up for a while, but in the end this thing is going to come crashing down.
But as obvious as that may seem to most of us, there are still quite a few people out there that are absolutely convinced that the U.S. economy will fully recover and will soon be stronger than ever.
So the following are 25 questions to ask anyone who is delusional enough to believe that this economic recovery is real….
#1) In what universe is an economy with 39.68 million Americans on food stamps considered to be a healthy, recovering economy? In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts that enrollment in the food stamp program will exceed 43 million Americans in 2011. Is a rapidly increasing number of Americans on food stamps a good sign or a bad sign for the economy?
#2) According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings were reported on 367,056 properties in the month of March. This was an increase of almost 19 percent from February, and it was the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing its report back in January 2005. So can you please explain again how the U.S. real estate market is getting better?
#3) The Mortgage Bankers Association just announced that more than 10 percent of U.S. homeowners with a mortgage had missed at least one payment in the January-March period. That was a record high and up from 9.1 percent a year ago. Do you think that is an indication that the U.S. housing market is recovering?
#4) How can the U.S. real estate market be considered healthy when, for the first time in modern history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together?
#5) With the U.S. Congress planning to quadruple oil taxes, what do you think that is going to do to the price of gasoline in the United States and how do you think that will affect the U.S. economy?
#6) Do you think that it is a good sign that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of the state of California, says that “terrible cuts” are urgently needed in order to avoid a complete financial disaster in his state?
#7) But it just isn’t California that is in trouble. Dozens of U.S. states are in such bad financial shape that they are getting ready for their biggest budget cuts in decades. What do you think all of those budget cuts will do to the economy?
#8) In March, the U.S. trade deficit widened to its highest level since December 2008. Month after month after month we buy much more from the rest of the world than they buy from us. Wealth is draining out of the United States at an unprecedented rate. So is the fact that the gigantic U.S. trade deficit is actually getting bigger a good sign or a bad sign for the U.S. economy?
#9) Considering the fact that the U.S. government is projected to have a 1.6 trillion dollar deficit in 2010, and considering the fact that if you went out and spent one dollar every single second it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars, how can anyone in their right mind claim that the U.S. economy is getting healthier when we are getting into so much debt?
#10) The U.S. Treasury Department recently announced that the U.S. government suffered a wider-than-expected budget deficit of 82.69 billion dollars in April. So is the fact that the red ink of the U.S. government is actually worse than projected a good sign or a bad sign?
#11) According to one new report, the U.S. national debt will reach 100 percent of GDP by the year 2015. So is that a sign of economic recovery or of economic disaster?
#12) Monstrous amounts of oil continue to gush freely into the Gulf of Mexico, and analysts are already projecting that the seafood and tourism industries along the Gulf coast will be devastated for decades by this unprecedented environmental disaster. In light of those facts, how in the world can anyone project that the U.S. economy will soon be stronger than ever?
#13) The FDIC’s list of problem banks recently hit a 17-year high. Do you think that an increasing number of small banks failing is a good sign or a bad sign for the U.S. economy?
#14) The FDIC is backing 8,000 banks that have a total of $13 trillion in assets with a deposit insurance fund that is basically flat broke. So what do you think will happen if a significant number of small banks do start failing?
#15) Existing home sales in the United States jumped 7.6 percent in April. That is the good news. The bad news is that this increase only happened because the deadline to take advantage of the temporary home buyer tax credit (government bribe) was looming. So now that there is no more tax credit for home buyers, what will that do to home sales?
#16) Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recently told the U.S. government that they are going to need even more bailout money. So what does it say about the U.S. economy when the two “pillars” of the U.S. mortgage industry are government-backed financial black holes that the U.S. government has to relentlessly pour money into?
#17) 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement. Tens of millions of Americans find themselves just one lawsuit, one really bad traffic accident or one very serious illness away from financial ruin. With so many Americans living on the edge, how can you say that the economy is healthy?
#18) The mayor of Detroit says that the real unemployment rate in his city is somewhere around 50 percent. So can the U.S. really be experiencing an economic recovery when so many are still unemployed in one of America’s biggest cities?
#19) Gallup’s measure of underemployment hit 20.0% on March 15th. That was up from 19.7% two weeks earlier and 19.5% at the start of the year. Do you think that is a good trend or a bad trend?
#20) One new poll shows that 76 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is still in a recession. So are the vast majority of Americans just stupid or could we still actually be in a recession?
#21) The bottom 40 percent of those living in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth. So is Barack Obama’s mantra that “what is good for Wall Street is good for Main Street” actually true?
#22) Richard Russell, the famous author of the Dow Theory Letters, says that Americans should sell anything they can sell in order to get liquid because of the economic trouble that is coming. Do you think that Richard Russell is delusional or could he possibly have a point?
#23) Defaults on apartment building mortgages held by U.S. banks climbed to a record 4.6 percent in the first quarter of 2010. In fact, that was almost twice the level of a year earlier. Does that look like a good trend to you?
#24) In March, the price of fresh and dried vegetables in the United States soared 49.3% – the most in 16 years. Is it a sign of a healthy economy when food prices are increasing so dramatically?
#25) 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 – a 32 percent increase over 2008. Not only that, more Americans filed for bankruptcy in March 2010 than during any month since U.S. bankruptcy law was tightened in October 2005. So shouldn’t we at least wait until the number of Americans filing for bankruptcy is not setting new all-time records before we even dare whisper the words “economic recovery”?