We Are Already In Depression (If Borrowing Money Is Not Income)

The data and chart comes from the Federal Reserve Economic Data base (FRED.) It is Gross domestic Product minus Treasury Debt. If you download them to a spread sheet GDP is expressed in billions so 1,000,000,000 is expressed as 1, while Federal Debt is expressed in millions so 1,000,000,000 is expressed as 1,000. That is why the chart is (Gross Domestic Product * 1000.)

 

Do you consider debt as income? Before you answer that, let’s perform a thought experiment. Imagine that you had taken a long cruise last fall and charged $10,000 to an American Express card. When you did your taxes this year, would have told the IRS that you had $10,000 income from American Express? Of course you wouldn’t. Suppose a major oil company issues $800 million worth of bonds to develop a new old field. Would the company report that as income to the stockholders or the IRS? Of course they wouldn’t. I am sure those sound like silly questions as the answer is a self evident “NO!” We do not consider borrowed money as income. It is a liability that must be paid back. Then why do we count Federal Government debt when measuring national income? I will leave speculation as to the “why” to the readers and focus on the fact that we do count new Treasury Debt as income.

Former BIS Chief Economist Warns “More Dangers Now Than In 2007”

Bloomberg

 

Having warned in the past that “the system is dangerously unacnhored,” former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements, William White, told Bloomberg TV overnight that the current situation “looks very similar to 2008,” adding that OECD sees “more dangers” today than in 2007.

Financial Fragility Reaching a Critical Mass

 

There are several key factors that have contributed to the financial fragility of the masses and our economy today. First, is that over the past 30 years, globalization and technology have helped to reduce the number of middle-class jobs available domestically. Fewer jobs and superfluous workers have led to stagnating incomes for most. At the same time, living expenses for critical services that are domestically-produced like education, medical services, child-care, housing and fresh food have all strongly outpaced income gains.

Marxist Socialism now relabeled as the Sharing Economy

 

In Canada, I was in a discussion with a socialist politician. I was shocked at the response to their view of the economy that everything you earned belonged to the state and they decided how much you were allowed to keep. This same attitude is displayed by the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA). They have cleaned up the way they say it softening the words and injecting a new term calling this a “sharing economy” and equating it to five key sectors of the sharing economy as being: “accommodation sharing, ride sharing, music and video streaming, online staffing, and peer/crowd funding.” The CRA is now selling socialism by relabeling this as a new “sharing economy” that assert “is becoming bigger part of the general economy, and that it is cooperating with industries, provinces, and territories on how tax systems and compliance is affected by such changes.”

Donald Trump will lead the US in the right direction. We should take note

Donald Trump will demand European and Asian alliance partners start taking more responsibility for their own security and paying their way. Photo: Chris O’Meara

 

 

Many working-class Americans, who had traditionally put their faith in the Democratic Party to deliver for them, voted Republican for the first time. In contrast, the Democrats, filled with the false confidence of urban progressives, condescended to call the working-class voter base uneducated and deplorable.

So, what did Americans vote for? How will Donald Trump “Make American Great Again”?

76 million Americans are struggling financially or just getting by

 

Wages are finally rising. Unemployment is the lowest it’s been since 2007. Inflation remains muted.

But 31% of American adults, or 76 million people, say they are struggling to get by or just barely making it, according to the Federal Reserve Bank’s latest survey on Americans’ economic well-being, which looked at 2015.

…

The Fed survey highlights many of Americans’ continuing economic worries. Some 46% of adults say they can’t cover an unexpected $400 expense or would have borrow or sell something to do so.

Attention President Obama: One Third Of U.S. Households Can No Longer Afford Food, Rent And Transportation

While the Fed has long been focusing on the revenue part of the household income statement (which unfortunately has not been rising nearly fast enough to stimulate benign inflation in the form of nominal wages rising at the Fed’s preferred clip of 3.5% or higher), one largely ignored aspect of said balance sheet has been the expense side: after all, for any money to be left over and saved, income has to surpass expenses. However, according to a striking new Pew study while household spending has returned to pre-recession levels (the average household spent $36,800 in 2014) incomes have not.

Specifically, while the median income had fallen by 13% from 2004 levels over the next decade, expenditures had increased by nearly 14%. But nobody was more impacted than the one-third of households which the study defines as “low-income.” Pew finds that while all households had less slack in their budgets in 2014 than in 2004, lower-income households went into the red by over $2,300.

The United States Is Already At Least As Socialist As Denmark

 

To be, or not to be Denmark? That, apparently, is the question for Democratic presidential candidates.

Perhaps unexpectedly, the beautiful northern European country of Denmark emerged as a topic of conversation during this week’s Democratic Party presidential debate. The small Scandinavian monarchy plays an important role in progressive mythology. It is a place many liberals want America to become, and both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton sung its praises during the debate. A closer look at Denmark’s public policies is, therefore, warranted. It yields some surprising results.

Soros Hides Billions From U.S. Taxes

 

Liberal billionaire George Soros has avoided paying billions in federal taxes by transferring assets to Ireland, a corporate tax haven, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.

Soros “had amassed $13.3 billion” by deferring taxes on fees paid by his hedge fund’s clients, according to Bloomberg. Efforts by U.S. lawmakers to close what some described as a loophole would have generated an additional $6.7 billion in tax revenue from Soros’ trading operation.

U.S. States Aren’t Prepared for the Next Fiscal Shock

U.S. states, still grappling with the lingering effects of the longest recession since the 1930s, are even more vulnerable to another fiscal shock.

The governments have a little more than half the reserves they’d stashed away before the 18-month recession that ended in June 2009, according to a report last month by Pew Charitable Trusts. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Arkansas have saved the least.

The Middle Class Is Worse Off Than You Think

 

If you worry about the declining fortunes of the U.S. middle class, take heed: It might be worse than you realized.

Tracking the middle class can be difficult, because the group is hard to define. Typically, researchers look at households with incomes or net worth in the middle of the entire population. This approach, though, might provide a falsely rosy picture. It doesn’t, for example, capture the fates of families that start out in the middle and — due to a job loss or other setback — end up in the bottom.

19 Signs That American Families Are Being Economically Destroyed

The systematic destruction of the American way of life is happening all around us, and yet most people have no idea what is happening.  Once upon a time in America, if you were responsible and hard working you could get a good paying job that could support a middle class lifestyle for an entire family even if you only had a high school education.  Things weren’t perfect, but generally almost everyone in the entire country was able to take care of themselves without government assistance.  We worked hard, we played hard, and our seemingly boundless prosperity was the envy of the entire planet.  But over the past several decades things have completely changed.  We consumed far more wealth than we produced, we shipped millions of good paying jobs overseas, we piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and we kept electing politicians that had absolutely no concern for the long-term future of this nation whatsoever.  So now good jobs are in very short supply, we are drowning in an ocean of red ink, the middle class is rapidly shrinking and dependence on the government is at an all-time high.  Even as we stand at the precipice of the next great economic crisis, we continue to make the same mistakes.  In the end, all of us are going to pay a very great price for decades of incredibly foolish decisions.  Of course a tremendous amount of damage has already been done.  The numbers that I am about to share with you are staggering.  The following are 19 signs that American families are being economically destroyed…

Half of American households can barely save a nickel

Please see the source link for the video.

 

Brother, can you spare a nickel?

For roughly half of American households they answer is “barely,” according to the results of a new survey by Bankrate.com. About half reported they are setting aside no more than 5 percent of their income in savings. One in five said they’re not even able to save a penny.

The highest savings rates were reported by those in the middle of the income ladder; more than a third of households earnings between $50,000 – 75,000 said they’re saving more than 10 percent of their incomes, a higher rate than those in the highest-income bracket.

5 Sure Signs the U.S. Economy is Finished

And the fact is, the gap between high- and low-income groups is the widest it has been in 100 years and the share of U.S. consumers who call themselves middle class has never been lower.But those aren’t the only signs the economy isn’t all that it’s cracked up be. In fact, there are five unmistakable signs the U.S. Economy is teetering on the brink.

Central banks fight ‘vultures’ in global currency war

A global war of currency depreciation has begun. Although the weapons are not killing anyone, the slow damage will be no less devastating than nuclear, chemical or biological warfare. In a worst-case scenario, there will be a substantial redistribution of the income and wealth of all nations and an even wider gap between the rich and poor.

The war has now spread to Denmark, Singapore, the EU, Switzerland, Japan and even South Korea and Taiwan. The weapons used include banknotes, central bank control of foreign exchange and interest rates, and vultures (hedge funds) in the financial markets defending and speculating on the currencies.