Friday, September 15, 2017

WALL STREET ANTICIPATES THE COLLAPSE OF THE STOCK MARKET AND PREPARES TO TRILLION DOLLAR BAILOUTS OFF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

"The top 10 percent of Americans now own roughly three-quarters of all household wealth."


Growing warnings of a stock market bubble
By Nick Beams
15 September 2017
Concerns are starting to be voiced in the financial elites about how long the bull run in stock markets, which has delivered hundreds of billions of dollars to them in additional wealth, can continue.
Last Monday the S&P 500 index went past the record high it reached in early August marking the second longest-running bull market in US history, eclipsing the 1949-56 upsurge. It has risen by around 268 percent since the market low of March 2009, recorded in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. The longest bull run was from 1987 to 2000, which ended with the collapse of the dotcom bubble.
With the coming to power of the Trump administration, markets experienced a surge and have risen by about 16 percent. Initially this was fuelled by the belief that with its program of tax cuts for corporations, deregulation and promises of infrastructure spending it would be good for the bottom line. But even as doubts have arisen over how much Trump will be able to deliver the market rise has continued.
Now there is some degree of nervousness about how long the present upsurge can go on, which was voiced on Tuesday at a hedge fund conference in New York organised by the business channel CNBC.
The clearest warning came from long-time hedge fund operator Julian Robertson who said “we are creating a bubble” in the stock market. Stock market prices are too high because the low interest rate regimes established by the world’s central banks meant that investors are taking on too much risk.
“It’s the Federal Reserve’s fault and the Federal Reserves all over the world,” he told the conference. With interest rates at record historical lows there was “no real competition” for stocks, pointing out that until recently negative interest rates in the German government bond market meant that investors had to pay to hold its debt.
Leon Cooperman, the head of the hedge fund Omega Advisors, said while he did not expect a bear market, a 5 to 8 percent correction could happen at “any time” and bonds, where interest rates are at near all-time lows, “look like they’re in a bubble.”
Others are not so much concerned with the low interest rate policies of the central banks but with geopolitical risks, the most prominent of which is the threat of war on the Korean Peninsula.
The CEO of Blackstone Group, Stephen Scwarzmman said the issue was not so much economic or even the policies of the central banks. “It’s geopolitical and there’s some bad things going on in the world and conventional analysis says things will be fine.”
But whether it was North Korea or trade “there are a number of issues that people don’t want to focus on because the outcome would be really bad,” he said.
One of the indicators of the emergence of financial bubble conditions has been the rise and rise in the value of the cryptocurrency bitcoin, which has jumped by 335 percent this year to a price of more than $4,000. The astronomical increase in its value has attracted some attention from investors, prompting remarks by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon at a Barclays Investment conference this week.
He said the currency was a “fraud” and that he would fire anyone at the bank who traded in it “in a second,” likening its rise to the Dutch tulip mania of the 17th century. “It won’t end well,” he said, adding that it would eventually “blow up.”
But the speculation in bitcoin is only a very graphic expression of the forces at work in financial markets as a whole. This can be seen by contrasting the latest bull run with that the run up of the markets in the period 1949-56. In the earlier period, the market was sustained by the growth of US industry in the past war period. By contrast, the present bull run takes place under conditions of low growth—the US economy has been growing at only 2 percent or less, well below that of any previous “recovery”—coupled with falling productivity and stagnant or falling wages.
The present period also compares unfavourably with the record run from 1987-2000. While market growth in that period contained a large element of speculation—even the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board Alan Greenspan had occasion in 1996 to refer to “irrational exuberance”—it was based, at least to some extent, on real developments.
These were the lowering of the cost structure of industry provided by the development of globalised production and the increased use of information technology. The present upsurge, however, has been virtually entirely driven by the ultra-cheap money policies of the Fed and other major central banks.
In fact the rise of the market is itself a reflection of the lack of investment opportunities in the real economy. Consequently, the share price bubble has been driven largely by financial manipulations such as the use of borrowed funds at low rates to finance share buybacks.
Evidence of the way in which the underlying weakness in the real economy has led to an increasing turn to financial operations was provided in an investigation by the Financial Times published this week.
It reported that Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet (the parent company of Google) are among a list of top US firms which have become a force in the global bond market. Some 30 major US corporations now hold more than $800 billion worth of fixed income investments and have become “asset managers in their own right” according to the head of JPMorgan’s corporate finance advisory group Ramaswamy Variankaval.
Overall the cash holdings of US corporations have risen to more than $2 trillion, an increase of 50 percent over the past decade and more than double their holdings at the turn of the century.
The Financial Times found that the 30 major companies which were the subject of its investigation, including firms such as Ford, Coca Cola and Boeing, hold more than $1.2 trillion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities.
These figures, which indicate the lack of investment opportunities because of low growth levels, point to the growing divergence between the rise of the stock market, and the real economy on which it ultimately depends.

OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a TRILLION DOLLARS in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!

Barack Obama created more debt for the middle class than any president in US

history, and also had the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.

OXFAM reported that during Obama’s 

terms, 95% of the wealth created went 

to the top 1% of the world’s wealthy. 


SOARING POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION UNDER OBAMA
"These figures present a scathing indictment of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest country, whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy. They are just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty. 



AMERICA UNRAVELS:

Millions of children go hungry as the super- rich gorge themselves and ILLEGALS SUCK IN BILLIONS IN WELFARE!

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"The top 10 percent of Americans now own roughly three-quarters of all household wealth."

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/08/america-unravels-millions-of-children.html

*

"While telling workers there is “not enough money” for wage increases, or to fund social programs, both parties hailed the recent construction of the U.S.S. Gerald Ford, a massive aircraft carrier that cost $13 billion to build, stuffing the pockets of numerous contractors and war profiteers."

US Census report shows increasing social inequality

By Eric London
15 September 2017
US Census data from 2016 released on Tuesday shows increasing social inequality amid a small gain in household income that is offset by a massive growth of personal debt and rising living costs.
The data tracks the ongoing redistribution of wealth from the working class to the wealthy as a result of the pro-Wall Street policies of both the Republican and Democratic parties. It substantiates the oligarchic character of the United States.

Social inequality

The Gini index, used to measure social inequality, with higher figures indicating a wider economic divide, rose slightly from 2015 (.479) to 2016 (.481). The 2016 figure, according to rankings in the CIA World Factbook, makes the US slightly more equal than Madagascar and less equal than Mexico.
In terms of aggregate income share, the shift from 2015 to 2016 is as follows:
The growth in inequality is even starker when traced from 2007, the year before the Wall Street crisis.
The data reflects income and not wealth, thereby providing an incomplete and conservative indication of the scale of inequality. Even within the highest quintile, the income share increased only for the top 10 percent, and, in particular, the top 5 percent.

Household income

The corporate media has portrayed the report as a sign of positive income growth, since it shows a slight rise in median income of 3.2 percent from 2015 to 2016.
But according to the Census data, the earnings of “full-time, year-round workers” remained stagnant. For men in this category, a total of 63.9 million people, earnings declined by 0.4 percent, from $51,859 in 2015 to $51,640 in 2016. For women in this category, 47.2 million people, there was a minor increase, 0.7 percent, from $41,257 in 2015 to $41,554 in 2016. In other words, families with 2 adults working full-time saw a paltry $78 increase in their yearly earnings from 2015 to 2016.
Claims of rising incomes mask the growth of inequality. The Census data shows that the household income of the 90th percentile (the 100th being the highest) was 12.53 times higher than the household income of the 10th percentile in 2016, up from 12.23 times higher in 2015 and 11.18 times higher in 2007. The degree to which income is concentrated in the richest 10 percent of the population is exemplified by the fact that the 5th percentile boasted a household income 3.82 times higher than the 50th percentile in 2016, up from 3.79 times in 2015 and 3.52 in 2007.
As Bloomberg News reported Wednesday, “Since 2007, average inflation-adjusted income has climbed more than 10 percent for households in the highest fifth of the earnings distribution, and it’s fallen 3.2 percent for the bottom quintile. Incomes of the top 5 percent jumped 12.8 percent over the period.”
For the working class, any income increase was transferred to the corporate elite in the form of rising debt payments and increasing living expenses, especially for health care.
According to figures from eHealth, a large private health exchange, average deductibles for families rose 5 percent from 2016 to 2017 (a year after the period covered by the Census report) and average individual premiums rose 22 percent over the same period.
The rising cost of student debt alone largely erases income increases seen by some young people. According to the Census, those aged 15 to 24 saw an income increase of 13.9 percent, from $36,564 in 2015 to $41,655 in 2016, while incomes for young people aged 25 to 34 rose 4.9 percent, from $58,091 to $60,932, nearly double the percentage increase for older age groups.
However, in 2016, student debt rose to an average of $30,000 per young person, up 4 percent from 2015, eliminating over 80 percent of the income rise for 25-34 year olds. For 15 to 24 year olds, the $4,000 increase in median income would hardly cover one sixth of the average debt payment, let alone make up for the fact that young people face a future in which they are unlikely to receive a pension, Social Security or Medicare.
Rising debt levels are not a phenomenon limited to young people. A Bloomberg report from August 10 notes that credit card defaults increased from the beginning of 2015—when roughly 2.5 percent of debt holders defaulted—to the end of 2016, when the total hit 3 percent. This figure subsequently climbed in 2017 to reach 3.49 percent.
Bloomberg notes: “After deleveraging in the aftermath of the last US recession, Americans have once again taken on record debt loads that risk holding back the world’s largest economy... Household debt outstanding--everything from mortgages to credit cards to car loans--reached $12.7 trillion in the first quarter [2017], surpassing the previous peak in 2008 before the effect of the housing market collapse took its toll, Federal Reserve Bank of New York data show.”
“For most Americans,” the report continues, “whose median household income, adjusted for inflation, is lower than it was at its peak in 1999, borrowing has been the answer to maintaining their standard of living. The increase in debt helps explain why the economy’s main source of fuel is providing less of a boost than in the past. Personal spending growth has averaged 2.4 percent since the recession ended in 2009, less than the 3 percent of the previous expansion and 4.3 percent from 1982-90.”
The Bloomberg report explains that income from wages minus household debt trended downward in 2015, meaning that debt is rising faster than wages, causing a loss of roughly $500 billion across the US economy in the space of just one year.

Poverty rate

Though the Census report shows that the poverty rate declined from 13.5 percent of households in 2015 to 12.7 percent in 2016, this figure is substantially higher than the 11.3 percent level that prevailed in 2000. In reality, individuals and families must make 2.5 to 3 times the official poverty rate of $12,000 for an individual, $15,500 for a married couple and $25,000 for a family of four just to make ends meet.
What the data really shows is that the poorest half of the country--over 150 million people--is in a desperate financial position, with the next poorest 40 percent facing constant financial strain and a declining share of the national income. In regard to poverty, the Census Bureau maintains figures that go up only to 200 percent of the official poverty level. The latest report shows that 95 million people—29.8 percent of the population—fall into this category. The share of those under the age of 18 in this category is much higher--39.1 percent.
This is the context for the drive by the Trump administration and both big business parties to slash corporate taxes, impose a health care “reform” that will increase costs for millions of people, and accelerate the transfer of wealth from the working class to the financial aristocracy.

Census Bureau: Mens’ Wages Remain Below 1973 Levels


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wages
AP Photo/David Goldman

Americans’ median pay packets have been flat since 1973, even though the vastly expanded federal government has justified its own salaries and its many massive spending and policy programs as a sure-fire way to boost education, productivity, and wages.

The colossal 44-year failure of the federal government to help grow American men’s wages — or even to reduce poverty rates — is laid bare in the latest report from the Census Bureau, “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2016.”
The dense report includes myriad detailed tables of data around one shocking chart, which reveals no growth in men’s wages for the past 44 years, or since President Richard Nixon was beginning his second term in office.
http://media.breitbart.com/media/2017/09/Screen-Shot-2017-09-13-at-12.02.41-AM.png
Median earning of full-time, year-round workers, 15 years and older, 1960 to 2016.
The sudden flatline followed a 31 percent rise in all men’s median wages from 1960 to 1972.

http://media.breitbart.com/media/2016/07/Nixon-1968-campaign-AP.jpg
During the 44-year period since 1973, income among women grew by roughly 30 percent as more skilled and trained women entered the market, gained experience, and were promoted to better-paying jobs. Those opportunities and contributions are good news — but they do not change the reality that men’s income has been flat for 44 years.
In fact, the report notes that “the real median earnings of full-time, year-round working men were 1.1 percent lower in 2016 than in 2007.”
There are many explanations for the flat income, such as the massive growth in the labor supply when 30 million additional American women and roughly 30 million immigrants joined in the marketplace competition for good jobs. For example, a pro-immigration panel at the prestigious National Academies of Science estimated in 2016 that the huge government-imposed inflow of immigrants since 1965 has imposed a hidden 5 percent “immigration tax” on Americans’ pay packets.
Technology has made many individuals workers more productive but also sidelined many others, such as newspaper printers and steelworkers. Peaceful international trade has allowed men to sell more products overseas but also allowed employers to hire foreign workers instead of Americans. Whatever the combinations of reasons, the mid-point for men’s income has been flat for 43 years, according to the Census Bureau.
The flat-earnings chart needs some explanation:
It shows only inflation-adjusted, pre-tax pay packets, so it excludes the impact of inflation, taxes and government benefits, such as food-stamps and tax-breaks for children, or of Obamacare’s subsidies and spending obligations.
It shows median income, which is the midpoint of the income scale. Half the people earn above the line, half the people earn below the line. Average income would be higher, but less revealing, because a higher share of income is going to the highest earners, compared to back in the 1970s.
The chart shows the income of year-round, full-time workers, excluding part-workers or seasonal workers, or those who work on-and-off under contracts. The chart does not make distinctions by race.
The chart shows individuals’ income, not the income of households, which has fluctuated as the average number of children or adults has declined.
The chart only shows income, but not the quality of goods in the stores, such as Starbucks coffee, cheap products imported from China, high-tech music players, improved autos or better health-care. That rise in product quality from competing companies — not claimed policy improvements from federal agencies — has provided the vast majority of material gains for Americans amid flat incomes.
The details are provided on Table A-4, on page 49 of this PDF.
The median earnings for all men employed year-round was $51,640 in 2016, which is still far below the $54,030 earned by full-time men in 1973. It is also below the $51,938 earned in the 2000 Internet boom, or the $52,222 earned in the 2007 property bubble when large-scale legal and illegal immigration provided employers with millions of alternative imported workers.
The post-1973 reality of flat income is a huge contrast to the rapid growth from 1960 up to the 1973 oil shock and the reopened inflow of immigrant labor after 1965.  During the twelves years 1960 to 1972, the median average wages for all males — including minorities, seasonal workers, and contract workers — rose from by 31 percent, from $31,926 to $41,013.
When the income of all men is gauged, the Bureau concluded that all men’s median income in 1973 was $41,935. It dropped after 1973 and rose back up to $43,360 in 1999 as companies competed for the few unemployed workers during the first Internet boom. Income crashed in 2008 to a depression-low of $39,636 in 2012 once the federal government’s real-estate bubble burst. Since then, income has slowly climbed back to $42,220 in 2016 amid the continuous public protest against the federal government’s cheap-labor economic strategy, which is exemplified by the bipartisan 2013 “Gang of Eight” amnesty legislation.
Other data in the report shows that the nation’s poverty rates have barely budged since the 1960s, although many people in the United States are wealthier than many people n Europe. For example, the percentage of American said to be in poverty was 11.1 percent in 1973 and 12.7  percent in 2016.
That national poverty rate climbed, in part, because of the population of Latinos spiked from 10.8 million in 1973 to 57.6 million in 2016. Poverty among Latinos was 19 percent in 2016, little changed from 1973.
The report also noted that:
The official poverty rate decreased by 0.8 percentage points between 2015 and 2016. At 12.7 percent, the 2016 poverty rate is not statistically different from 2007 (12.5 percent), the year before the most recent recession.
In real terms, median earnings of full-time, year-round working women in 2016 were 2.3 percent higher than their 2007 median, the year before the most recent recession. The real median earnings of full-time, year-round working men were 1.1 percent lower in 2016 than in 2007.
In 2017, the number and percentage of shared households remained higher than in 2007, the year before the most recent recession. In 2007, 17.0 percent of all households were shared households, totaling 19.7 million households. In 2017, 19.4 percent of all households were shared households, totaling 24.6 million households.Read it all here.
THE HOUSTON FLOOD   -   CRONY CAPITALIST LICK THEIR LIPS OVER REBUILDING.... FIRST, LIKE KATRINA, CUT WAGES AND INVITE HORDES MORE ILLEGALS IN TO WORK CHEAP!
"Like Katrina, Hurricane Harvey has lifted the lid on the ugly reality of American society, exposing colossal levels of social inequality, pervasive poverty and ruling class criminality."

"The reason why these warnings have been ignored is not hard to fathom. They have been resolutely opposed by corporate interests, including the real estate industry, Wall Street and Big Oil. Their ability, operating through bribed politicians of  both parties, to veto and block elementary measures to protect the American people, exemplifies the complete subordination of all social needs under capitalism to the selfish drive of a corporate-financial oligarchy to accumulate ever greater levels of personal wealth and profit."
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THEY INVADE OVER AND UNDER OUR BORDERS… and do so by invitation of the Democrat Party.
Lawmen are worried that the cartel tunnel builders on the Mexican border are now using their engineered concoctions to smuggle illegals, not merely drugs.

That's what the Daily Caller has found, describing the new anxiety as one was discovered over the weekend, catching about 30 illegals coming in from Mexico and China. MONICA SHOWALTER – AMERICAN THINKER.com


SOARING POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION UNDER OBAMA
"These figures present a scathing indictment of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest country, whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy. They are just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty. 
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS to serve the filthy rich

The same period has seen a massive growth of social inequality, with income and wealth concentrated at the very top of American society to an extent not seen since the 1920s.

“This study follows reports released over the past several months documenting rising mortality rates among US workers due to drug addiction and suicide, high rates of infant mortality, an overall leveling off of life expectancy, and a growing gap between the life expectancy of the bottom rung of income earners compared to those at the top.”

SOARING POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION UNDER OBAMA
"These figures present a scathing indictment of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest country, whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy. They are just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty. 


SOARING POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION UNDER OBAMA
"These figures present a scathing indictment of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest country, whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy. They are just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty. 



AMERICA UNRAVELS:

Millions of children go hungry as the super- rich gorge themselves and ILLEGALS SUCK IN BILLIONS IN WELFARE!


"The top 10 percent of Americans now own roughly three-quarters of all household wealth."

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/08/america-unravels-millions-of-children.html

"While telling workers there is “not enough money” for wage increases, or to fund social programs, both parties hailed the recent construction of the U.S.S. Gerald Ford, a massive aircraft carrier that cost $13 billion to build, stuffing the pockets of numerous contractors and war profiteers."



Sanctuary City Murder: Teen Illegal Immigrant Kills with Cop’s Stolen Gun, Police Say




An illegal immigrant being monitored by immigration officials is now accused of murder in the sanctuary city of San Francisco, California.

Erick Garcia-Pineda, 18, wore an ankle monitor placed by immigration officials when he allegedly murdered 23-year-old Abel Ezquivel, according to NBC Bay Area.
Four days before the murder, Pineda allegedly stole a San Francisco Police officer’s service pistol from a police vehicle. Days later, the illegal immigrant allegedly used the gun to murder Ezquivel.
Following the murder, Pineda was later arrested and detained for unrelated battery charges. Police say they noticed the illegal immigrant’s monitoring bracelet and used it to link Pineda to several other crimes, including five robberies and two other shooting incidents.
Pineda, according to NBC, was attempting to obtain asylum in the U.S., claiming he was under threat of the MS-13 gang.
It remains unclear why Pineda was wearing an ankle monitor by immigration officials, but was not previously arrested for his illegal status.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

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