There is another round of bad news for most Americans. A study shows the top 1% of America's rich captured 121% of the income gains for the two years after the 2007-2009 recession was declared over. U.C. Berkeley Economist Emmanuel Saez released his study Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States early this month to much press. It truly is astounding. Gone is America's strong middle class where work was rewarded.
Payday loans have to be the poster child for exploiting the poor. People should never get a payday loan. Selling blood or begging in the streets is a better option. The Pew Chartable Trust has been on the warpath to expose these exploitive sorts of financial ripoffs which it turns out are quite the profitable business.
The United Kingdom's bond rating was just downgraded by Moody's from AAA to AA1, in part due to the U.K.'s austerity measures which repressed economic growth.
For once he's right. President Obama came out blasting against the upcoming sequestration as a major threat to the U.S. economy. He's right. These draconian cuts, $85 billion for FY 2013, will be enacted starting in March 2013 if Congress doesn't stop it. The CBO estimates this year's budget costs will cost the United States a full 1.5 percentage points of GDP.
Nowhere is the evidence of unbridled corporate greed stronger than in what the financial crisis did to the U.S. economy. The losses are staggering. Economic growth was killed to the tune of over $13 trillion. Homeowners lost a whopping $8.1 trillion in home values.
Wall Street is now winding their way through the swiss cheese loophole maze financial reform is. Remember credit default swaps, those deadly, bad math, bad computation derivatives which were behind the financial crisis?
There is a complete disconnect in Washington from the quiet desperation of American lives. While politicians chatter talking points and claim lobbyists' agendas are somehow sane economic and labor policy, a full 23% of Americans have been fired in the last four years.
Credit reports control way too much of an individual's life. A bad credit score can deny someone a job, never mind a credit card and a mortgage. The four billion dollar a year consumer credit rating industry has way too much power and almost no accountability.
Congress is focused on all the wrong things to get people back to work. We hear day after day the drone of budget deficits, yet not a word is mentioned on the trade deficit. This is the problem Congress should be obsessed with. Our massive trade deficit is stunting economic growth and costing America millions of jobs.
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