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22 Facts That Prove That The Bottom 90 Percent Of America Is Systematically Getting Poorer
The mainstream media is not telling you this, but the truth is that most Americans are steadily getting poorer. The middle class is being absolutely eviscerated, and poverty is soaring to unprecedented heights. The fact that 90 percent of the population is constantly sliding downhill is not good for our society. The United States is supposed to be a land of opportunity with a vibrant free market system that enables average people to make better lives for themselves. Unfortunately, free enterprise is being strangled to death in the United States today. Entrepreneurs and small business are being pounded into oblivion by rules, regulations, red tape and oppressive levels of taxation. At the same time, millions of jobs have been shipped out of the United States by corporate giants and sent to countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages. All of this has happened under both Democrats and Republicans. Meanwhile, wealth and power continue to become even more heavily concentrated in the hands of big government and big corporations. Our founding fathers warned that we should not allow such large concentrations of wealth and power, because they tend to funnel the rewards of society into the hands of a select few. We need to change the rules of the game so that entrepreneurs, small businesses and average workers can thrive in this country once again. If big government and big corporations continue to gobble up even more wealth and power, the wealth inequality that we see right now will only get even worse.
The following are 22 facts that prove that the bottom 90 percent of America is systematically getting poorer…
#1 According to the Pew Research Center, the top 7 percent of all U.S. households own 63 percent of all the wealth in the country.
#2 Between 2009 and 2011, the wealth of the bottom 93 percent of all Americans declined by 4 percent, while the wealth of the top 7 percent of all Americans increased by 28 percent.
#3 On average, households in the top 7 percent have 24 times as much wealth as households in the bottom 93 percent.
#4 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
#5 According to the Economic Policy Institute, the wealthiest one percent of all American households have 288 times the amount of wealth that the average middle class American family does on average.
#6 According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.
#7 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have as much wealth as the bottom one-third of all Americans combined.
#8 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.
#9 In the United States today, corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are at an all-time high, but wages as a percentage of GDP are at an all-time low.
#10 In 1980, CEOs at S&P 500 companies made 42 times as much as their employees did on average. Today, CEOs at S&P 500 companies make 354 times as much as their employees do on average. In fact, there are many CEOs that make more than 1000 times what the average employees in their companies make.
#11 According to a report recently issued by the Pew Research Center, Americans over the age of 65 have 47 times as much wealth as Americans under the age of 35 on average.
#12 U.S. families that have a head of household that is under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.
#13 Back in 2007, about 28 percent of all working families were considered to be among “the working poor”. Today, that number is up to 32 percent even though our politicians tell us that the economy is supposedly recovering.
#14 At this point, one out of every four American workers has a job that pays $10 an hour or less.
#15 Today, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.
#16 The U.S. economy continues to trade good paying jobs for low paying jobs. 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.
#17 As I mentioned yesterday, the homeownership rate in America is now at its lowest level in nearly 18 years.
#18 The United States now ranks 93rd in the world in income inequality.
#19 Approximately one out of every five households in the United States is now on food stamps.
#20 The number of Americans on food stamps has grown from 17 million in the year 2000 to more than 47 million today.
#21 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 146 million Americans are either “poor” or “low income”.
#22 At this point, the poorest 50 percent of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
Even if your income just stays the same, you are still getting poorer because inflation is a tax that is constantly chipping away at the value of every single dollar that you own. The cost of everything that we buy on a regular basis (food, gas, health insurance, etc.) is constantly going up, and if your income is not keeping pace that means that you are getting poorer.
That is just one reason why the Federal Reserve system is so insidious. They are killing the middle class with inflation. For much more on the Federal Reserve and why it should be abolished, please see this article: “10 Things That Every American Should Know About The Federal Reserve“.
So if most Americans are getting poorer, then why aren’t our politicians doing something to fix it?
Well, the sad truth of the matter is that the big corporations fund the campaigns of our corrupt politicians. They know that the candidate that raises the most money almost always wins, and so it provides an incentive for our politicians to be very good to those that have the money.
Plus, many of our politicians are way too busy having a good time to be bothered with doing anything for us. Take Barack Obama for example. According to The Telegraph, Barack Obama has spent twice as much time playing golf and vacationing as he has on attending economic meetings…
In an analysis of the presidential diary and newspaper reports, the Government Accountability Institute found that Mr Obama has spent 976 hours since his January 2009 election on holiday and playing golf.
In contrast, he has only spent 474.4 hours in economic meetings.
“As a government watchdog group, we just tabulate the numbers and let others decide how to interpret them,” said Peter Schweizer, president of GAI, which compiled the report.
But this is a problem that is not going away. The bottom 90 percent of the country is systematically getting poorer, and if this continues it will inevitably result in massive social problems. The video posted below does a great job of graphically illustrating the crisis that we are facing…
View full post on The Economic Collapse
Gold and Silver • Currency Wars – Race to the Bottom
Currency Wars – Race to the Bottom
The alarmist media always seeks to sell papers or broadcast ratings, built on the unswerving fear that followed the financial meltdown, the banking establishment profits from the debt liquidation panic. The lack of stability in fiscal confidence certainly abounds, but the schemes to paper over the mountain of liability obligations, develop at even a more rapid pace. The implied result of a real currency war is that nations are acting or defending their own national interests. The truth is that fiat currencies, designed to depreciate, benefits the moneychangers as the loss of purchasing power penalizes taxpayers and consumers.
The financial press spins the "so called" harmonious unity of the industrial nations, in a lame attempt to ease concerns that the money markets can be trusted. An example is the G20 summit to focus on ‘currency war’ threat to economy. This Independent article, lays out the implications of the current currency row.
"G20 officials are set to disregard key parts of the G7 currency statement while making no direct mention of new debt-cutting targets – something Germany is pressing for but which the United States is opposed to.
CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said: "What the G7 basically said this week is that it is fine to manipulate your currency as long as you don’t talk about it. These ‘currency wars’ are more like phony wars. The bigger problem the G20 has is not currency wars, it is a lack of growth."
Substitute the term currency war, for coordinated inflation, cloaked in the public announcements, out of the globalist ministers for a single world currency. Do not doubt for a moment that the ultimate goal is to create managed crisis, in order to push soveriegn countries into incessant serfdom. The Fiscal Times in the article, How a Fake Currency War Panicked Global Economies, concludes.
"What we have been calling "the currency wars" these past couple of weeks is nothing more than a process of adjustment. Exchange values will settle. We have entered a period where economic priorities are changing on a global scale. This reflects a shift in views even from last autumn, when austerity was still the faith. This adjustment will have its effect on currency values, let there be no question. Do not mistake it for a war."
This kind of monetary distortions is the inevitable outcome with the abandonment of the gold standard. Currency trading is the largest market on the planet. Artificial gains are derived from intentional imbalances, since gambling has replaced business as the path to riches. True wealth is build upon the fruits of commerce. The dangerous notion that a cheap currency is desired because it expands exports is a sure formula for national demise. This point illustrated by George Smith, provides a more realistic assessment in his essay, Currency wars are fiat wars.
"According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, exports accounted for 13.8% of GDP in 2011, a record high but still a small fraction of the total. Devaluing the currency for the alleged benefit of a small segment of the economy hardly makes economic sense when it penalizes all participants with higher prices. It also buttresses the sense that the currency wars will ignite a shooting war and end like all wars, with only a handful of winners and millions of losers. As we know Keynesians star-struck with World War II believe otherwise, and Keynesians run the economy."
The observation that the global financial potentates are Keynesian disciples is undeniable. The fable that an actual currency war is upon us, avoids the valid supposition that replacing the present floating exchange system with a contemporary fixed currency standard would restore equilibrium and fiscal discipline, and curtail much of the collusion among central banks. Welcome a genuine currency crusade that eradicates the globalist infidels and reinstates trusted and stable coinage to a legitimate free enterprise economy.
As long as script money is used as an accounting medium for central financial planning, honest coinage will be attractive as an alternative to depreciating paper values. The race to the bottom is more a rush away from legal tender to actual commodities.
The Japanese Yen’s dramatic drop in comparison to most currencies is just the beginning of a rotating realignment that sees world purchasing power reduced for average citizens. The essay, Bretton Woods II – The Final Enslavement of Mankind, provides the hint of the end game.
"These financers are admittedly the evil rulers of society. Any attempt to force a singular currency and a universal taxation levee is a fulfillment of the final enslavement of man-kind. Bretton Wood II is an outline for things to come. The debt created money cartel is ready to impose their captivity on sovereign governments."
As the revolving musical chairs plays out, the planned calamities drive the "Nervous Nellies" into the arms of the banksters cabal for a fabricated, but temporary, stability. This staged scenario keeps the one world combine administering their "Pollyanna" existence at the expense of the exploited. The financial elite are living in a dream world of their own creation.
The factual result from this cooked up currency war raises international debt obligations, out of an urgent hope of serving their roll over refinance, with even cheaper currency values. The worldwide financial system, desperately entrapped in a black hole of lower economic growth and wealth generation, cannot combat the consequences of compound interest.
When the sad song stops, interest rates will explode upward. At that point, all paper money will lose the confidence of the financial markets, as the derivative bubble breaks. The final bottom is anybody’s guess. The political response will take the appearance of a unified front to save the intercontinental financial system. The literal result will be that the New World Order elites will consolidate their power and control over an inventive substitute for national currencies. The valid conclusion is that the actual war is one against the entire banking charade. Money is a mere bookkeeping device.
James Hall – February 20, 2013
http://www.batr.org/negotium/022013.html
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Thu Feb 21, 2013 2:07 am
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Other • Real Estate: Is the Bottom In, or Is This a Head-Fake?
Real Estate: Is the Bottom In, or Is This a Head-Fake?
December 10, 2012
Everyone interested in real estate is asking the same question: Is the bottom in, or is this just another “green shoots” recovery that will soon wilt?
Let’s start by reviewing the fundamental forces currently affecting real estate valuations.
Expanding the pool of potential buyers has reached the upper limit
There are two ways to expand the pool of qualified home buyers, and they both rely on expanding leverage: A) lower the down payment from 20% cash to 3%, and B) lower the mortgage rate to 3.5%.
Lowering the down payment increases the leverage from 4-to-1 to 33-to-1, a massive leap.
Increasing leverage increases risk. Over 90% of all mortgages are guaranteed or backed by Federal agencies such as FHA. This “socialization” of the mortgage industry means that losses ultimately flow through to the taxpayers, who are subsidizing the housing industry via these agencies.
Lowering the mortgage rate increases the leverage of income. It now takes much less income to qualify for greatly reduced monthly payments.
With mortgage rates barely above the prime rate and Treasury bond yields negative in terms of inflation, there is simply no room left for lower rates or down payments. The “increase home sales by expanding the pool of buyers” game plan has been run to the absolute limit.
The pool of buyers cannot be expanded any further; that boost to sales is done.
The unintended consequence of enticing marginal buyers to buy homes is that defaults are rising: 1 out of 6 FHA-insured loans are delinquent. This is the “blowback” of qualifying everyone with an income above the poverty line as a homebuyer.
The mortgage industry has escaped any consequences of “robo-signing” mortgage fraud
If the rule of law existed in more than name, this is what should have happened:
MERS, the mortgage industry’s placeholder of fictitious mortgage notes, would have been summarily shut down.
All mortgages and derivatives based on mortgages would have been marked-to-market.
All losses would be booked immediately, and any institution that was deemed insolvent would have been shuttered and its assets auctioned off in an orderly fashion.
Regardless of the cost to owners of mortgages, every deed, lien, and note would be painstakingly reconstructed on every mortgage in the U.S., and the deed and note properly filed in each county as per U.S. law.
That none of this has happened is proof that the rule of law is “optional” for financial institutions in America.
The $25 billion mortgage fraud settlement turned a blind eye to the fraud, and now the banks are applying losses they have already booked to the $25 billion, mooting the supposed “benefit” of the settlement to consumers.
The Federal Reserve’s purchase of mortgages – over $1.1 trillion in 2009-10 and now another $40 billion a month – is essentially a money-laundering operation in which the Fed exchanges cash for dodgy mortgages.
Analyst Catherine Austin Fitts (QE3 – Pay Attention If You Are in the Real Estate Market) summarized what this means:
“The Fed is now where mortgages go to die.”
"Thousands of mortgages on homes that do not exist or on homes that have more than one ‘first’ mortgage are now going to the Fed to disappear. Thousands of multifamily and commercial mortgages will be bought up as well. With documents shredded, criminal liabilities extinguished and financial institutions made whole, funds can return without fear of seizure.
QE3 proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that the extent of the fraud was as bad as I said it was. You can count up the bailouts and QE1, QE2, QE3 the numbers speak for themselves. The fraud was indeed in the many trillions of dollars.”
In other words, the financial sector has gotten away with murder, and the “overhang” of systemic fraud has been erased with Fed connivance.
Banks are restricting inventory
The banks are withholding distressed properties to restrict the inventory of homes for sale.
If supply overwhelms demand, prices decline. That would be a bad thing for banks sitting on millions of defaulted mortgages and distressed properties. Millions of impaired properties are being held off the market so supply is lower than demand.
The strategy has costs; thousands of defaulted homeowners have been living mortgage-free for years. But the gains have been impressive: with supply dwindling, beaten-down markets have seen gains of 20+% this year as strong investor demand has pushed prices higher.
Since the strategy has paid such handsome returns, why change it?
ZIRP has attracted investment
The Fed’s ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) has pushed investors into a “search for safe yield” that has led many to buy corporate bonds, dividend stocks and everyone’s favorite “safe” fixed asset, real estate.
In many markets, one-third or more of all sales have been to investors.
Some are buying distressed properties to “flip” in strong-demand markets, but many are buying the homes as rentals with the plan being to hold them for a few years as prices rise and then sell to reap appreciation.
Anecdotally, every investor class is getting into the act, from Mom and Pop to big players such as insurance companies and Wall Street funds. One of my contacts in the insurance industry told me that his firm was buying large multi-unit apartment complexes, as these rentals generated a yield of 6% to 7%, far above the 1.7% yield of ten-year Treasury bonds.
In a non-ZIRP world, Treasuries and other asset classes would offer similar yields but without the risks and costs of managing rentals. But in a ZIRP world of near-zero yields for low-risk financial assets, rental real estate is a compelling investment: decent yields, relatively low risk, and strong appreciation potential if housing has indeed bottomed.
“The bottom is in” – isn’t it?
Once potential buyers see prices rise and they conclude that “the bottom is in,” they jump in and buy, pushing prices higher in a positive feedback loop. The higher prices rise, the more evidence there is that the bottom is in, and the greater the incentives to jump in before prices once again rise out of reach.
Favorable rent/buy ratio
With mortgage rates well below 4%, the rent-buy ratio is favorable in many areas. It may indeed be cheaper to buy than to rent in some locales.
“Hot money” flowing into real-estate
As economies in Europe and Asia falter, “hot money” is flowing into perceived “safe havens” such as the U.S. and Canada. Some of this “hot money” ($225-$300 billion a year is leaving China alone) is flowing into real estate, a well-known phenomenon in markets such as Vancouver, B.C., Miami, and Los Angeles.
Conclusion
What can we conclude from this overview of fundamentals?
The mortgage industry escaped any real consequence from its systemic fraud
The Status Quo plan to reflate the housing market with super-low mortgage rates and down payments has worked to some degree
The financial sector’s plan to boost home prices by limiting supply has also worked
ZIRP has created a “crowded trade” in low-risk investments with attractive yields such as corporate bonds, dividend stocks, and real estate, which is being fueled by a self-reinforcing perception that “the bottom is in”
The question now is will these forces continue pushing prices higher? If so, the bottom may well be in. If these forces deteriorate or lose their effectiveness, then the “green shoots” of investor interest may wither as the U.S. economy joins Europe and Japan by re-entering recession.
http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Sun Dec 09, 2012 10:22 pm
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Will The Bottom Fall Out? 15 Signs That Layoffs And Job Losses Are Skyrocketing
If you still have a good job, you might want to hold on to it very tightly because there are a whole bunch of signs that unemployment in the United States is about to start getting worse again. Over the past several weeks, a substantial number of large corporations have announced disappointing earnings for the third quarter. Many of those large corporations are also loaded up with huge amounts of debt. So what is the solution? Well, the favorite solution on Wall Street these days seems to be to lay off workers. In fact, it is almost turning into a feeding frenzy. Since September 1st, we have seen more job cuts announced than during any other two month period since the start of 2010. These announcements represent future layoffs and job losses which are not even showing up in the unemployment numbers yet. So needless to say, things don’t look very promising for the end of 2012 or for the beginning of 2013. If this race to eliminate jobs becomes a stampede, will we see the bottom fall out of the employment market?
If you are concerned about whether or not you will still have a job 12 months from now, you might find the numbers posted below to be quite alarming. We have not seen layoff announcements come this fast and this furious since the gloomy days of the last recession.
According to Bloomberg, job cuts are well ahead of the pace set last year…
North American companies have announced plans to eliminate more than 62,600 positions at home and abroad since Sept. 1, the biggest two-month drop since the start of 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Firings total 158,100 so far this year, more than the 129,000 job cuts in the same period in 2011.
So what happens if the economy really starts sliding rapidly and this loss of jobs becomes an avalanche?
Can the U.S. economy and the American people handle another major economic downturn?
Some of the biggest names in the business world have announced job cuts in recent weeks. The following are 15 signs that layoffs and job losses are skyrocketing…
1. Dow Chemical has announced that it will be closing about 20 plants and will be letting about 2,400 workers go.
2. Colgate-Palmolive has announced that they will be eliminating about 2,300 jobs.
3. DuPont has announced plans to eliminate about 1,500 jobs.
4. Ford has announced that it will be eliminating 6,200 jobs and will be reducing production capacity in Europe by 18 percent.
5. Hewlett-Packard announced last month that they plan to eliminate 29,000 jobs.
6. Chip maker AMD has announced that they will be getting rid of about 15 percent of their workers.
7. Sony has announced plans to reduce their workforce by about 2,000 workers.
8. Electronics manufacturer Sharp reportedly plans to eliminate 11,000 jobs.
9. Engine maker Cummins Inc. has announced that they plan to get rid of about 1,500 jobs by the end of 2012.
10. Earlier this month Applied Materials announced a plan that will eliminate up to 1,300 jobs.
11. Zynga (known for making video games for Facebook such as FarmVille) has announced that they are reducing their workforce by about 5 percent.
12. Lattice Semiconductor has announced plans to eliminate about 13 percent of their jobs.
13. Alcatel-Lucent recently announced a plan to eliminate more than 5000 jobs all over the globe.
14. Siemens AG has announced that the number of positions being eliminated may reach 10,000 by the end of the year.
15. Banking giant UBS plans to eliminate up to 5,000 jobs.
Please keep in mind that these job cuts do not show up in the unemployment numbers yet. When big corporations announce the elimination of jobs, it often takes a while before those job losses actually take place.
Sadly, I believe that this is just the tip of the iceberg. I am convinced that the layoffs and the job losses are going to get a lot worse.
In fact, 2013 is already shaping up to be a very difficult year for the economy no matter how the election turns out.
Those of you that read my articles regularly already know that our economic system is becoming increasingly unstable. We could literally plunge into another major recession at any moment.
Not that we need any more economic trouble. Tens of millions of American families are having to fight tooth and nail just to make it from month to month right now.
There aren’t enough jobs and the middle class is rapidly shrinking. Even if you do have a job, that does not mean that you are doing okay. About a quarter of all jobs do not even pay enough to lift a family of four above the poverty level, and entry level wages for those with just a high school education have been steadily declining over the past 40 years. If you doubt this, just check out this chart.
So what is going to happen if we do have another avalanche of job losses like we saw back in 2008 and 2009?
Will even more of us end up dependent on the government?
We are told that we are in the midst of an “economic recovery”, but the number of Americans that are dependent on the government just continues to soar. In fact, at this point it is at an all-time high.
If the economy is getting better, then why does the number of Americans on food stamps just keep going up? To get an idea of just how massive the food stamp program has become, just check out this infographic.
One of the most frightening things about the possibility of another major economic downturn is the loss of hope that it could bring.
At this point, most Americans still believe that things will get better eventually.
But what is going to happen when large segments of our population lose all hope?
How desperate will they become?
When people become desperate, they tend to do desperate things.
Just check out what happened to a family down in Woodstock, Georgia the other day. They had just lost their home to foreclosure, and they were getting ready to move out. So they posted an ad on Craigslist for people to come over and get some things that they were planning to get rid of. What happened next is a glimpse into the kind of desperate behavior that we may see during the next major economic downturn…
Their online post was just a well-meaning ad for a giveaway in their driveway outside the small house, a giveaway scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Wednesday.
But big crowds showed up and ended up taking practically everything inside the house, too.
Wednesday night, Michael Vercher walked 11Alive’s Jon Shirek through his family’s almost empty soon-to-be former home.
“Well, when we got to the house, I mean, pretty much — this,” he said as he stepped from the foyer into the living room.
Their home — ransacked, ravaged, raked over.
Almost everything inside — gone.
My wife and I once used Craigslist quite a bit, but incidents like this make one question the wisdom of inviting strangers to come to your home.
Sadly, the truth is that society is rapidly decaying, and the worse unemployment becomes the more desperate people are going to get.
So what do you think about all of this?
Do you have any stories that you would like to share?
Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below…
View full post on The Economic Collapse
Gold and Silver • Silver Price Triple Bottom
Silver Price Triple Bottom
Commodities / Gold and Silver 2012Jul 01, 2012 – 11:15 AM
By: Clive_Maund
TO SEE THIS ARTICLE C/W CHARTS GO TO:
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article35414.html?
Much of what is written for the Gold Market update applies equally to silver, so it will not be repeated here. There are, however, some important differences that we will focus on here, which suggest that silver now has really big upside potential from this point, despite its comparatively anemic reaction on Friday to the news out of Europe, compared to other commodities
We are not going to do a "post mortem" here regarding what happened last week, other than to say that silver was on the point of breaking to new lows on Thursday, and would have done had little or nothing been achieved at the European summit, as was the case at the previous 18 summits.
There are 2 big differences between gold and silver which both suggest that silver has truly explosive upside potential from here. One is that silver has suffered a far more serious decline than gold over the past 2 years, with sentiment towards it becoming extraordinarily negative in the recent past, and the other that silver’s COT structure is now at record bullish levels, and far more bullish than that for gold. This is a situation where all it needed was some pivotal fundamental development – and last week we had it – to turn the tide in the other direction.
On its 6-month chart we can see that silver went into further decline during the early part of last week, taking it even lower, before reversing to the upside on Friday on the news out of Europe, and even though the rise on Friday was comparatively modest, it still left behind a clear "Bullish Engulfing Pattern" on the chart which is indicative of a reversal, particularly following a lengthy decline. It would appear that the markets have gotten so negative on silver, that even after what happened in Europe on Thursday night, they are "not convinced" – but they will be after further strong gains on short covering in the near future.
The 3-year chart shows that after severely testing the key support at the lows of September and December, silver is now in position to rally away from what should be seen later to be a Triple Bottom pattern. Although its moving averages are clearly in bearish alignment, silver will not have to rally too far to get above these averages so that they start turning up.
Given the extraordinary fundamental developments last week that have turned the markets up, in the process signaling an important broad reversal, it should be clear that we have an exceptionally positive risk/reward ratio for those going long silver here, as buyers can place fairly close stops beneath last week’s lows. Anyone short should reverse position at once.
Silver’s COT chart is now astoundingly bullish after the further contraction of Commercial short and Large and Small Spec long positions last week to record or near record lows since the bullmarket began. This is the kind of setup that typically precedes a major multi-month upleg.
By Clive Maund
CliveMaund.com
For billing & subscription questions: subscriptions@clivemaund.com
© 2012 Clive Maund – The above represents the opinion and analysis of Mr. Maund, based on data available to him, at the time of writing. Mr. Maunds opinions are his own, and are not a recommendation or an offer to buy or sell securities. No responsibility can be accepted for losses that may result as a consequence of trading on the basis of this analysis.
Mr. Maund is an independent analyst who receives no compensation of any kind from any groups, individuals or corporations mentioned in his reports. As trading and investing in any financial markets may involve serious risk of loss, Mr. Maund recommends that you consult with a qualified investment advisor, one licensed by appropriate regulatory agencies in your legal jurisdiction and do your own due diligence and research when making any kind of a transaction with financial ramifications.
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Mon Jul 02, 2012 10:01 pm
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Gold and Silver • GOLD IS AT, OR VERY NEAR A LONG TERM BOTTOM
GOLD IS AT, OR VERY NEAR A LONG TERM BOTTOM
http://goldscents.blogspot.ca/
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Sat Jun 30, 2012 2:56 pm
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Gold and Silver • Re: This Is the Bottom for Gold
I thought it might go a bit lower, but it may indeed have it bottom. Time will tell. And likely not a long time either.
Statistics: Posted by Deo Vindice — Sat May 19, 2012 11:01 pm
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American • Six Wal-Mart heirs are wealthier than U.S.’ entire bottom 30
Does an annual income of $150,000 make a person rich? Depends on whom you ask.
As Americans fret over how to tax the rich and Occupy protesters rail against the 1%, new reports find that the definition of wealth is a tenuous one.
First, some context: The wealth of the 1% is about 225 times greater than that of the typical family, compared to 125 times in 1962, according to analysis from labor economist Sylvia Allegreto with UC Berkeley.
And based on the most recent data, the cumulative wealth of the Forbes 400 was $1.54 trillion — equal to the worth of the bottom half of American families.
That means the $69.7 billion held by the six Walton relatives of Wal-Mart founders Sam and James Walton in 2007 was equal to the net worth of the bottom 30% of Americans, according to Allegreto.
Today, she said, the Walton pot is estimated to be around $93 billion.
Household net worth from July to September fell 4% to $57.4 trillion in its sharpest drop since September 2008, the Federal Reserve said Thursday.
The median income to be considered “rich” is $150,000 a year, according to a new Gallup poll — a threshold that has increased since 2003, when Americans said they’d be rich with $120,000 a year.
But among different groups of people, what makes one “rich” seems to be relative — just as the meaning of “luxury” changes for Americans.
About 15% of respondents said it would take $1 million a year or more to fall into that category. But three in 10 say that they’d qualify as prosperous even pulling in less than six figures.
The median household income is $50,000, according ot the U.S. Census Bureau. About half of Americans believe that affluence equates to at least $1 million in net worth, including cash, stocks, real estate and other investments.
Men, as well as people younger than 50, said they need more than $150,000 before calling themselves rich, compared to a $100,000 benchmark for women and older respondents.
College graduates, households with children under age 18 and residents in cities and suburbs said they require $200,000 a year to categorize themselves as well off. Non-graduates, those without young children and people living in small towns or rural areas put the cutoff at $100,000.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_c … rcent.html
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Sun Dec 11, 2011 3:10 am
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