OBAMAnomics:
Billionaire
Class Enjoys 15X the Wage Growth of American Working Class
The
billionaire class — the country’s top 0.01 percent of earners — have enjoyed
more than 15 times as much wage growth as America’s working and middle class
since 1979, new wage data reveals.
Between 1979 and 2017, the wages of the bottom 90 percent — the
country’s working and lower middle class — have grown by only about 22 percent,
Economic Policy Institute (EPI) researchers find.
Compare that small wage
increase over nearly four decades to the booming wage growth of America’s top
one percent, who have seen their wages grow more than 155 percent during the
same period.
The top 0.01 percent — the
country’s billionaire class — saw their wages grow by more than 343
percent in the last four decades, more than 15 times the wage growth of the
bottom 90 percent of Americans.
In 1979, America’s working
class was earning on average about $29,600 a year. Fast forward to 2017, and
the same bottom 90 percent of Americans are earning only about $6,600 more
annually.
The almost four decades of wage
stagnation among the country’s working and middle class comes as the national
immigration policy has allowed for the admission of more than 1.5 million
mostly low-skilled immigrants every year.
In the last decade, alone, the U.S. admitted ten million legal
immigrants, forcing American workers to compete against a growing population of
low-wage workers. Meanwhile, employers are able to reduce wages and drive up
their profit margins thanks to the annual low-skilled immigration scheme.
The Washington, DC-imposed mass immigration policy
is a boon to corporate executives, Wall Street, big business, and multinational
conglomerates as every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of an
occupation’s labor force reduces Americans’ hourly wages
by 0.4 percent. Every one percent increase in the immigrant workforce reduces
Americans’ overall wages by 0.8 percent.
Mass immigration has come at
the expense of America’s working and middle class, which has suffered from poor
job growth, stagnant wages, and increased public costs to offset the
importation of millions of low-skilled foreign nationals.
Four million young Americans enter the workforce every year, but
their job opportunities are further diminished as the U.S. imports roughly two
new foreign workers for every four American workers who enter the workforce.
Even though researchers say 30 percent of the workforce could lose their jobs due to
automation by 2030, the U.S. has not stopped importing more than a million
foreign nationals every year.
For blue-collar American workers, mass immigration has not only
kept wages down but in many cases decreased wages, as Breitbart News reported. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues
importing more foreign nationals with whom working-class Americans are
forced to compete. In 2016, the U.S. brought in about 1.8 million
mostly low-skilled immigrants.
Study: Elite Zip Codes
Thrived in Obama Recovery, Rural America Left Behind
4:49
Wealthy
cities and elite zip codes thrived under the slow-moving economic recovery of
President Obama while rural American communities were left behind, a study
reveals.
The Economic Innovation Group research, highlighted by Axios, details the massive
economic inequality between the country’s coastal city elites and middle America’s
working class between the Great Recession in 2007 and Obama’s economic recovery
in 2016.
Between 2007 and 2016, the
number of residents living in elite zip codes grew by more than ten million,
with an overwhelming faction of that population growth being driven by mass
immigration where the U.S. imports more than 1.5 million illegal and legal
immigrants annually.
The booming 44.5 million immigrant populations are concentrated mostly in the country’s
major cities like Los Angeles, California, Miami Florida, and New York City,
New York. The rapidly growing U.S. population — driven by immigration — is set
to hit 404 millionby 2060, a boon for real estate
developers, wealthy investors, and corporations, all of which benefit greatly
from dense populations and a flooded labor market.
The economic study found that
while the population grew in wealthy cities, America’s rural population fell by
nearly 3.5 million residents.
Likewise, by 2016, elite zip
codes had a surplus of 3.6 million jobs, which is more than the combined bottom
80 percent of American zip codes. While it only took about five years for
wealthy cities to replace the jobs lost by the recession, it took “at risk”
regions of the country a decade to recover, and “distressed” U.S. communities
are “unlikely ever to recover on current trendlines,” the report predicts.
A map included in the research
shows how rich, coastal metropolises have boomed economically while entire
portions of middle America have been left behind as job and business gains
remain concentrated at the top of the income ladder.
Economic growth among the
country’s middle-class counties and middle-class zip codes has considerably
trailed national economic growth, the study found.
For example, between 2012 and
2016, there were 4.4 percent more business establishments in the country as a
whole. That growth was less than two percent in the median zip code and there
was close to no growth in the median county.
The same can be said of employment
growth, where U.S. employment grew by about 9.3 percent from 2012 to 2016. In
the median zip code, though, employment grew by only 5.5 percent and in the
median county, employment grew by less than four percent.
“Nearly three in every five
large counties added businesses on net over the period, compared to only one in
every five small one,” the report concluded.
Elite zip codes added more
business establishments during Obama’s economic recovery, between 2012 and
2016, than the entire bottom 80 percent of zip codes combined. For instance,
while more than 180,000 businesses have been added to rich zip codes, the
country’s bottom tier has lost more than 13,000 businesses even after the
economic recovery.
The gutting of the American manufacturing base, through free
trade, has been a driving catalyst for the collapse of the
white working class and black Americans. Simultaneously, the outsourcing of the
economy has brought major wealth to corporations, tech conglomerates, and Wall
Street.
The dramatic decline of U.S. manufacturing at the hands of free
trade—where more than 3.4 million American jobs have been
lost solely due to free trade with China, not including the American jobs lost
due to agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the
United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS)—has coincided with growing
wage inequality for white and black Americans, a growing number of single mother
households, a drop in U.S. marriage rates, a general stagnation of
working and middle class wages, and specifically, increased black American
unemployment.
“So, the loss of manufacturing
work since 1960 represents a steady decline in relatively high-paying jobs for
less-educated workers,” recent research from economist Eric D. Gould has
noted.
Fast-forward to the modern economy and the wage trend has been
the opposite of what it was during the peak of manufacturing in the U.S. An
Economic Policy Institute studyfound this year that been 2009 and 2015, the top one
percent of American families earned about 26 times as much income as the
bottom 99 percent of Americans.
Record
high income in 2017 for top one percent of wage earners in US
In 2017, the top one percent of US wage earners received
their highest paychecks ever, according to a report by the Economic Policy
Institute (EPI).
Based on newly released data from the Social Security
Administration, the EPI shows that the top one percent of the population saw
their paychecks increase by 3.7 percent in 2017—a rate nearly quadruple the
bottom 90 percent of the population. The growth was driven by the top 0.1
percent, which includes many CEOs and corporate executives, whose pay increased
eight percent and averaged $2,757,000 last year.
The EPI report is only the latest exposure of the gaping
inequality between the vast majority of the population and the modern-day
aristocracy that rules over them.
The EPI shows that the bottom 90 percent of wage earners
have increased their pay by 22.2 percent between 1979 and 2017. Today, this
bottom 90 percent makes an average of just $36,182 a year, which is eaten up by
the cost of housing and the growing burden of education, health care, and
retirement.
Meanwhile, the top one percent has increased its wages by
157 percent during this same period, a rate seven times faster than the other
group. This top segment makes an average of $718,766 a year. Those in-between,
the 90th to 99th percentile, have increased their wages by 57.4 percent. They
now make an average of $152,476 a year—more than four times the bottom 90
percent.
Decades of decaying capitalism have led to this
accelerating divide. While the rich accumulate wealth with no restriction,
workers’ wages and benefits have been under increasing attack. In 1979, 90
percent of the population took in 70 percent of the nation’s income. But, by
2017, that fell to only 61 percent.
Even more, while the bottom 90 percent of the population
may take in 61 percent of the wages, large sections of the workforce today
barely pull in any income at all. For example, Social Security
Administration data found that the bottom 54 percent of wage earners in the
United States, 89.5 million people, make an average of just $15,100 a year.
This 54 percent of the population earns only 17 percent of all wages paid in
America.
However unequal, these wage inequalities still do not fully
present the divide between rich and poor. The ultra-wealthy derive their wealth
not primarily from wages, but from assets and equities—principally from the
stock market. While the bottom 90 percent of the population made 61 percent of
the wages in 2017, they owned even less, just 27 percent of the wealth
(according to the World Inequality Report 2018 by Thomas
Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman).
The massive increase in the value of the stock market,
which only a small segment of the population participates in, means that the
top 10 percent of the population controls 73 percent of all wealth in the
United States. Just three men—Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates—had more
wealth than the bottom half of America combined last year.
Wages are so low in the United States that roughly half of
the population falls deeper into debt every year. A Reuters report from July
found that the pretax net income (that is, income minus expense) of the bottom
40 percent of the population was an average of negative $11,660.
Even the middle quintile of the population, the 40th to 60th percentile, breaks
even with an average of only $2,836 a year.
As the Social Security Administration numbers show, 67.4
percent of the population made less than the average wage, $48,250 a year in
2017, a sum that is inadequate to support a family in many cities—especially,
with high housing costs, health care, education, and retirement factored in.
For the ruling class, though, workers’ wages are already
too much. The volatility of the stock market and the deep fear that the current
bull market will collapse has made politicians and businessmen anxious of any
sign of wage increases.
In August, wages in the US rose just 0.2 percent above the
inflation rate, the highest in nine years. Though the increase was tiny, it was
enough to encourage the Federal Reserve to increase the interest rate past two
percent for the first time since 2008. Raising interest rates helps to depress
workers’ wages by lowering borrowing and spending. As the Financial
Times noted, stopping wage growth was “central” to the Federal
Reserve’s move.
Further analysis of the Social Security Administration data
shows that in 2017, 147,754 people reported wages of 1 million dollars or
more—roughly, the top 0.05 percent. Their combined total income of $372 billion
could pay for the US federal education budget five times over.
These wages, however large, still pale in comparison to the
money the ultra-rich acquire from the stock market. For example, share buybacks
and dividend payments, a way of funneling money to shareholders, will eclipse
$1 trillion this year.
Whatever the immediate source, the wealth of the rich
derives from the great mass of people who do the actual work. Across the United
States and around the world, workers, young people, and students have entered
into struggle this year over pay, education, health care, immigration, war and
democratic rights. This growing movement of the working class must set as its
aim confiscating the wealth and power of this tiny parasitic oligarchy.
Society’s wealth must be democratically controlled by those who produce it.
THE STAGGERING ECONOMIC INEQUALITY UNDER OBAMA'S ADMINISTRATION SERVING THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS.
THE ENTIRE REASON BEHIND AMNESTY IS TO KEEP WAGES
DEPRESSED AND PASS ALONG THE REAL COST OF "CHEAP" MEXICAN LABOR TO
THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS.
AND IT'S WORKING!
SEN.
BERNIE SANDERS
“Calling
income and wealth inequality the "great
moral issue of our time,"
Sanders laid out a
sweeping, almost unimaginably expensive
program to transfer
wealth from the richest
Americans to the poor and middle class. A $1
trillion
public works program to create "13 million
good-paying jobs." A $15-an-hour
federal
minimum wage. "Pay equity" for women. Paid
sick leave and
vacation for everyone. Higher
taxes on the wealthy. Free tuition at all public
colleges and universities. A Medicare-for-all
single-payer health care system.
Expanded Social
Security benefits. Universal pre-
K.” WASHINGTON
EXAMINER
YOU
THOUGHT OBAMA INVITED OBAMANOMICS and started the assault on the American
middle-class?
NOPE!
“By the time of Bill
Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its
association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton
gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich
(WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of
black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious
“three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population
in the world.”
OBAMA: SERVANT OF THE 1%
Richest one percent controls nearly half of global wealth
The
richest one percent of the world’s population now controls 48.2 percent of
global wealth, up from 46 percent last year.
The report found that the
growth of global inequality has accelerated sharply since the 2008 financial
crisis, as the values of financial assets have soared while wages have
stagnated and declined.
Millionaires projected to own 46
percent of global private wealth by 2019
Households with more than a million (US) dollars in private wealth are
projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth in 2019 according to a new
report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
This large percentage, however, only includes cash, savings, money market
funds and listed securities held through managed investments—collectively known
as “private wealth.” It leaves out businesses, residences and luxury goods,
which comprise a substantial portion of the rich’s net worth.
At the end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41
percent of global private wealth, according to BCG. This means that
collectively these 17 million households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in
liquid assets, or about $4 million per household.
In total, the world added $17.5 trillion of new private wealth between
2013 and 2014. The report notes that nearly three quarters of all these gains
came from previously existing wealth. In other words, the vast majority of
money gained has been due to pre-existing assets increasing in value—not the
creation of new material things.
This trend is the result of the massive infusions of cheap credit into
the financial markets by central banks. The policy of “quantitative easing” has
led to a dramatic expansion of the stock market even while global economic
growth has slumped.
While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck
pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed
towards the very top.
In 2014, those with over $100 million in private wealth saw their wealth
increase 11 percent in one year alone. Collectively, these households owned $10
trillion in 2014, 6 percent of the world’s private wealth. According to the
report, “This top segment is expected to be the fastest growing, in both the
number of households and total wealth.” They are expected to see 12 percent
compound growth on their wealth in the next five years.
Those families with wealth between $20 and $100 million also rose
substantially in 2014—seeing a 34 percent increase in their wealth in twelve
short months. They now own $9 trillion. In five years they will surpass $14
trillion according to the report.
Coming in last in the “high net worth” population are those with between
$1 million and $20 million in private wealth. These households are expected to
see their wealth grow by 7.2 percent each year, going from $49 trillion to
$70.1 trillion dollars, several percentage points below the highest bracket’s
12 percent growth rate.
The gains in private wealth of the ultra-rich stand in sharp contrast to
the experience of billions of people around the globe. While wealth
accumulation has sharply sped up for the ultra-wealthy, the vast majority of
people have not even begun to recover from the past recession.
An Oxfam report from January, for example,
shows that the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population went from having
about 56 percent of the world’s wealth in 2010 to having 52 percent of it in
2014. Meanwhile the top 1 percent saw its wealth rise from 44 to 48 percent of
the world’s wealth.
In 2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found that between 2003 and 2013, the
median household net worth of those in the United States fell from $87,992 to
$56,335—a drop of 36 percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during
the recession, they are more than making that money back. Between 2009 and
2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1 percent.
This is the most distorted post-recession income gain on record.
As the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has
noted, in the United States “between 2007 and 2013, net wealth fell on average
2.3 percent, but it fell ten-times more (26 percent) for those at the bottom 20
percent of the distribution.” The 2015 report concludes that “low-income
households have not benefited at all from income growth.”
Another report by Knight Frank, looks at those with wealth
exceeding $30 million. The report notes that in 2014 these 172,850
ultra-high-net-worth individuals increased their collective wealth by $700
billion. Their total wealth now rests at $20.8 trillion.
The report also draws attention to the disconnection between the rich and
the actual economy. It states that the growth of this ultra-wealthy population
“came despite weaker-than-anticipated global economic growth. During 2014 the
IMF was forced to downgrade its forecast increase for world output from 3.7
percent to 3.3 percent.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders –
America’s answer to Wall Street’s looting, the war on the American middle-class
and jobs for legals!
“At
this point, Clinton is the choice of most multimillionaires to be the next
occupant of the White House. A recent CNBC poll of 750 millionaires found 53
percent support for Clinton in a contest with Republican Jeb Bush, 14 points
better than Obama’s showing in the 2012 election with the same group.”
THE CRONY CLASS:
OBAMACLINTONOMICS was created by BILLARY
CLINTON!
Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES FASTER under Obama than
Bush.
“By the time of Bill
Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its
association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton
gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich
(WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of
black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious
“three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population
in the world.”
“Calling
income and wealth inequality the "great moral issue of our time,"
Sanders laid out a sweeping, almost unimaginably expensive program to transfer
wealth from the richest Americans to the poor and middle class. A $1 trillion
public works program to create "13 million good-paying jobs." A
$15-an-hour federal minimum wage. "Pay equity" for women. Paid sick
leave and vacation for everyone. Higher taxes on the wealthy. Free tuition at
all public colleges and universities. A Medicare-for-all single-payer health
care system. Expanded Social Security benefits. Universal pre-K.” WASHINGTON
EXAMINER
OBAMA’S
WALL STREET and the LOOTING of AMERICA – SECOND TERM
The corporate cash hoard has likewise reached
a new record, hitting an estimated $1.79 trillion in the fourth quarter of last
year, up from $1.77 trillion in the previous quarter. Instead of investing the
money, however, companies are using it to buy back their own stock and pay out
record dividends.
Megan
McArdle Discusses How America's Elites Are Rigging the Rules - Newsweek/The
Daily Beast special correspondent Megan McArdle joins Scott Rasmussen for a
discussion on America's new Mandarin class.
PATRICK BUCHANAN: OBAMA’S ASSAULT ON
AMERICA BEGINS AT OUR BORDERS
WHO REALLY PAYS FOR THE CRIMES OF OBAMA’S
CRONY DONORS???
LAST WEEK BARACK OBAMA CELEBRATED FIVE YEARS OF THE LOOTING BY
HIS WALL STREET BANKSTERS… now it’s back to cutting social programs to pay for
all that rape by the 1% he represents. The following week it will be back to
the AMNESTY HOAX to legalize Mexico’s looting of America and make it legal that
Mexicans get our jobs first… they already do!
As in previous budget crises under the Obama administration, the
events are being stage-managed by the two corporate-controlled parties to give
the illusion of partisan gridlock and confrontation over principles—in this
case, whether to go forward with the implementation of the Obama health care
program—while behind the scenes all factions within the ruling elite agree that
massive cuts must be carried through in basic federal social programs.
OBAMA’S CRONY CAPITALISM – A NATION RULED BY
CRIMINAL WALL STREET BANKSTERS AND OBAMA DONORS
GET
THIS BOOK
Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of
Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies
by Michelle Malkin
In her shocking new book, Malkin digs deep into the records
of President Obama's staff, revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and
abuses of power throughout his administration.
PATRICK BUCHANAN
After Obama has completely destroyed the
American economy, handed millions of jobs to illegals and billions of dollars
in welfare to illegals…. BUT WHAT COMES NEXT?
OBAMANOMICS:
IS IT WORKING???
Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of global private
wealth by 2019
By Gabriel Black
18 June 2015
Households
with more than a million (US) dollars in private wealth are projected to own 46
percent of global private wealth in 2019 according to a new report by the Boston
Consulting Group (BCG).
This
large percentage, however, only includes cash, savings, money market funds and
listed securities held through managed investments—collectively known as
“private wealth.” It leaves out businesses, residences and luxury goods, which
comprise a substantial portion of the rich’s net worth.
At
the end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41 percent of global
private wealth, according to BCG. This means that collectively these 17 million
households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in liquid assets, or about $4 million
per household.
In
total, the world added $17.5 trillion of new private wealth between 2013 and
2014. The report notes that nearly three quarters of all these gains came from
previously existing wealth. In other words, the vast majority of money gained
has been due to pre-existing assets increasing in value—not the creation of new
material things.
This
trend is the result of the massive infusions of cheap credit into the financial
markets by central banks. The policy of “quantitative easing” has led to a
dramatic expansion of the stock market even while global economic growth has
slumped.
While
the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a
stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.
In
2014, those with over $100 million in private wealth saw their wealth increase
11 percent in one year alone. Collectively, these households owned $10 trillion
in 2014, 6 percent of the world’s private wealth. According to the report,
“This top segment is expected to be the fastest growing, in both the number of
households and total wealth.” They are expected to see 12 percent compound
growth on their wealth in the next five years.
Those
families with wealth between $20 and $100 million also rose substantially in
2014—seeing a 34 percent increase in their wealth in twelve short months. They
now own $9 trillion. In five years they will surpass $14 trillion according to
the report.
Coming
in last in the “high net worth” population are those with between $1 million
and $20 million in private wealth. These households are expected to see their
wealth grow by 7.2 percent each year, going from $49 trillion to $70.1 trillion
dollars, several percentage points below the highest bracket’s 12 percent
growth rate.
The
gains in private wealth of the ultra-rich stand in sharp contrast to the
experience of billions of people around the globe. While wealth accumulation
has sharply sped up for the ultra-wealthy, the vast majority of people have not
even begun to recover from the past recession.
An
Oxfam report from
January, for example, shows that the bottom 99 percent of the world’s
population went from having about 56 percent of the world’s wealth in 2010 to
having 52 percent of it in 2014. Meanwhile the top 1 percent saw its wealth
rise from 44 to 48 percent of the world’s wealth.
In
2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found that between 2003 and 2013, the median
household net worth of those in the United States fell from $87,992 to
$56,335—a drop of 36 percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during
the recession, they are more than making that money back. Between 2009 and
2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1 percent.
This is the most distorted post-recession income gain on record.
As
the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has noted, in
the United States “between 2007 and 2013, net wealth fell on average 2.3
percent, but it fell ten-times more (26 percent) for those at the bottom 20
percent of the distribution.” The 2015 report concludes that “low-income
households have not benefited at all from income growth.”
Another
report by Knight Frank, looks at those with wealth exceeding $30
million. The report notes that in 2014 these 172,850 ultra-high-net-worth
individuals increased their collective wealth by $700 billion. Their total
wealth now rests at $20.8 trillion.
The
report also draws attention to the disconnection between the rich and the
actual economy. It states that the growth of this ultra-wealthy population
“came despite weaker-than-anticipated global economic growth. During 2014 the
IMF was forced to downgrade its forecast increase for world output from 3.7
percent to 3.3 percent.”
THE CRONY
CLASS:
OBAMACLINTONOMICS was created by BILLARY
CLINTON!
Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES FASTER under Obama than
Bush.
“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election in
1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with the
reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare
programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW
MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black
capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three
strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the
world.”
“Calling
income and wealth inequality the "great moral issue of our time,"
Sanders laid out a sweeping, almost unimaginably expensive program to transfer
wealth from the richest Americans to the poor and middle class. A $1 trillion
public works program to create "13 million good-paying jobs." A $15-an-hour
federal minimum wage. "Pay equity" for women. Paid sick leave and
vacation for everyone. Higher taxes on the wealthy. Free tuition at all public
colleges and universities. A Medicare-for-all single-payer health care system.
Expanded Social Security benefits. Universal pre-K.” WASHINGTON
EXAMINER
OBAMA’S
WALL STREET and the LOOTING of AMERICA – SECOND TERM
The corporate cash hoard has likewise reached
a new record, hitting an estimated $1.79 trillion in the fourth quarter of last
year, up from $1.77 trillion in the previous quarter. Instead of investing the
money, however, companies are using it to buy back their own stock and pay out
record dividends.
Megan
McArdle Discusses How America's Elites Are Rigging the Rules - Newsweek/The
Daily Beast special correspondent Megan McArdle joins Scott Rasmussen for a
discussion on America's new Mandarin class.
POLL: MOST
INCOMPETENT AND DISHONEST PRESIDENT SINCE…. Well, isn’t Obama merely Bush’s
THIRD and FOURTH TERMS??
OBAMA’S
CRONY CAPITALISM
A NATION
RULED BY CRIMINAL WALL STREET BANKSTERS AND OBAMA DONORS
PATRICK
BUCHANAN
After Obama
has completely destroyed the American economy, handed millions of jobs to
illegals and billions of dollars in welfare to illegals…. BUT WHAT COMES NEXT?
OBAMANOMICS: IS IT WORKING???
Millionaires
projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019
By
Gabriel Black
18 June 2015
Households with more than a million (US)
dollars in private wealth are projected to own 46 percent of global private
wealth in 2019 according to a new report by the Boston Consulting
Group (BCG).
This large percentage, however, only
includes cash, savings, money market funds and listed securities held through
managed investments—collectively known as “private wealth.” It leaves out
businesses, residences and luxury goods, which comprise a substantial portion
of the rich’s net worth.
At the end of 2014, millionaire households
owned about 41 percent of global private wealth, according to BCG. This means
that collectively these 17 million households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in
liquid assets, or about $4 million per household.
In total, the world added $17.5 trillion
of new private wealth between 2013 and 2014. The report notes that nearly three
quarters of all these gains came from previously existing wealth. In other
words, the vast majority of money gained has been due to pre-existing assets
increasing in value—not the creation of new material things.
This trend is the result of the massive
infusions of cheap credit into the financial markets by central banks. The
policy of “quantitative easing” has led to a dramatic expansion of the stock
market even while global economic growth has slumped.
While the wealth of the rich is growing at
a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy,
skewed towards the very top.
In 2014, those with over $100 million in
private wealth saw their wealth increase 11 percent in one year alone.
Collectively, these households owned $10 trillion in 2014, 6 percent of the
world’s private wealth. According to the report, “This top segment is expected
to be the fastest growing, in both the number of households and total wealth.”
They are expected to see 12 percent compound growth on their wealth in the next
five years.
Those families with wealth between $20 and
$100 million also rose substantially in 2014—seeing a 34 percent increase in
their wealth in twelve short months. They now own $9 trillion. In five years
they will surpass $14 trillion according to the report.
Coming in last in the “high net worth”
population are those with between $1 million and $20 million in private wealth.
These households are expected to see their wealth grow by 7.2 percent each
year, going from $49 trillion to $70.1 trillion dollars, several percentage
points below the highest bracket’s 12 percent growth rate.
The gains in private wealth of the
ultra-rich stand in sharp contrast to the experience of billions of people
around the globe. While wealth accumulation has sharply sped up for the ultra-wealthy,
the vast majority of people have not even begun to recover from the past
recession.
An Oxfam report from January,
for example, shows that the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population went
from having about 56 percent of the world’s wealth in 2010 to having 52 percent
of it in 2014. Meanwhile the top 1 percent saw its wealth rise from 44 to 48
percent of the world’s wealth.
In 2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found
that between 2003 and 2013, the median household net worth of those in the
United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36 percent. While the rich
also saw their wealth drop during the recession, they are more than making that
money back. Between 2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in the US
went to the top 1 percent. This is the most distorted post-recession income
gain on record.
As the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) has noted, in the United States “between
2007 and 2013, net wealth fell on average 2.3 percent, but it fell ten-times
more (26 percent) for those at the bottom 20 percent of the distribution.” The
2015 report concludes that “low-income households have not benefited at all
from income growth.”
Another report by Knight Frank,
looks at those with wealth exceeding $30 million. The report notes that in 2014
these 172,850 ultra-high-net-worth individuals increased their collective
wealth by $700 billion. Their total wealth now rests at $20.8 trillion.
The report also draws attention to the
disconnection between the rich and the actual economy. It states that the
growth of this ultra-wealthy population “came despite weaker-than-anticipated
global economic growth. During 2014 the IMF was forced to downgrade its
forecast increase for world output from 3.7 percent to 3.3 percent.”
OBAMA-CLINTONomics:
the never end war on the American middle-class. But we still get the tax bills
for the looting of their Wall Street cronies and their bailouts and billions
for Mexico’s welfare state in our borders.
While
the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a
stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.
In 2014, those with over $100 million in
private wealth saw their wealth increase 11 percent in one year alone.
Collectively, these households owned $10 trillion in 2014, 6 percent of the
world’s private wealth. According to the report, “This top segment is expected
to be the fastest growing, in both the number of households and total wealth.”
They are expected to see 12 percent compound growth on their wealth in the next
five years.
In 2014
the Russell Sage Foundation found that between
2003 and
2013, the median household net worth of those in
the United
States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36
percent.
While the rich also saw their wealth drop during the
recession,
they are more than making that money back.
Between
2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in
the US
went to the top 1 percent. This is the most distorted
post-recession
income gain on record.
INCOME
PLUMMETS UNDER OBAMA AND HIS WALL STREET CRONIES
collapse of household income in the US… STILL
BILLIONS IN WELFARE HANDED TO ILLEGALS… they already get our jobs and are
voting for more!
INCOME PLUMMETS UNDER OBAMA… most jobs go to
illegals.
AS HIS CRONY BANKSTERS CONTINUE TO LOOT, INCOMES PLUMMET FOR
AMERICANS (LEGALS).
GOOD TIME FOR AMNESTY FOR MILLIONS OF LOOTING MEXICANS?
MORE HERE:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/09/and-still-democrat-party-wants-millions.html
“The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a
massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013. This is
just one of the findings of the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer
Finances released Thursday, which documents a sharp decline in working class
living standards and a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich
and the super-rich.”
"During the month, some 432,000 people in the
US
gave up looking for a job."
"The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process."
HILLARY CLINTON'S BIGGEST DONORS ARE OBAMA'S CRIMINAL CRONY BANKSTERS!
"A defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself."
Federal Reserve documents stagnant state of US economy
Federal Reserve documents stagnant state of US economy
By Barry Grey
21 July 2015
The US Federal Reserve
Board last week released its semiannual Monetary Policy Report to Congress,
providing an assessment of the state of the American economy and outlining the
central bank’s monetary policy going forward. The report, along with Fed Chair
Janet Yellen’s testimony before both the House of Representatives and the
Senate, as well as a speech by Yellen the previous week in Cleveland, present a
grim picture of the reality behind the official talk of economic “recovery.”
In her prepared remarks to Congress last Wednesday and Thursday, Yellen said, “Looking forward, prospects are favorable for further improvement in the US labor market and the economy more broadly.”
She reiterated her assurances that while the Fed would likely begin to raise its benchmark federal funds interest rate later this year from the 0.0 to 0.25 percent level it has maintained since shortly after the 2008 financial crash, it would do so only slowly and gradually, keeping short-term rates well below historically normal levels for an indefinite period.
This was an expected, but nevertheless welcome, signal to the American financial elite, which has enjoyed a spectacular rise in corporate profits, stock values and personal wealth since 2009 thanks to the flood of virtually free money provided by the Fed.
"But as Yellen’s remarks and the Fed report indicate, the explosion of asset values and wealth accumulation at the very top of the economic ladder has occurred alongside an intractable and continuing slump in the real economy."
In her prepared testimony to the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee, Yellen noted the following features of the performance of the US economy over the first six months of 2015:
* A sharp decline in the rate of economic growth as compared to 2014, including an actual contraction in the first quarter of the year.
* A substantial slackening (19 percent) in average monthly job-creation, from 260,000 last year to 210,000 thus far in 2015.
* Declines in domestic spending and industrial production.
In her July 10 speech to the City Club of Cleveland, Yellen cited an even longer list of negative indices, including:
* Growth in real gross domestic product (GDP) since the official beginning of the recovery in June, 2009 has averaged a mere 2.25 percent per year, a full one percentage point less than the average rate over the 25 years preceding what Yellen called the “Great Recession.”
* While manufacturing employment nationwide has increased by about 850,000 since the end of 2009, there are still almost 1.5 million fewer manufacturing jobs than just before the recession.
* Real GDP and industrial production both declined in the first quarter of this year. Industrial production continued to fall in April and May.
* Residential construction (despite extremely low mortgage rates by historical standards) has remained “quote soft.”
* Productivity growth has been “weak,” largely because “Business owners and managers… have not substantially increased their capital expenditures,” and “Businesses are holding large amounts of cash on their balance sheets.”
* Reflecting the general stagnation and even slump in the real economy, core inflation rose by only 1.2 percent over the past 12 months.
The Monetary Policy Report issued by the Fed includes facts that are, if anything, even more alarming, including:
* “Labor productivity in the business sector is reported to have declined in both the fourth quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015.”
* “Exports fell markedly in the first quarter, held back by lackluster growth abroad.”
* “Overall construction activity remains well below its pre-recession levels.”
* “Since the recession began, the gains in… nominal compensation [workers’ wages and benefits] have fallen well short of their pre-recession averages, and growth of real compensation has fallen short of productivity growth over much of this period.”
* “Overall business investment has turned down as investment in the energy sector has plunged. Business investment fell at an annual rate of 2 percent in first quarter… Business outlays for structures outside of the energy sector also declined in the first quarter…”
The report incorporates the Fed’s projections for US economic growth, published following the June meeting of the central bank’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. They include a downward revision of the projection for 2015 to 1.8 percent-2.0 percent from the March projection of 2.3 percent to 2.7 percent.
That the US economy continues to stagnate and even contract is indicated by two surveys released last week while Yellen was testifying before Congress. The Fed reported that factory production failed to increase in June for the second straight month and output in the auto sector fell 3.7 percent. The Commerce Department reported that retail sales unexpectedly fell in June, declining by 0.3 percent.
These statistics follow the employment report for June, which showed that the share of the US working-age population either employed or actively looking for work, known as the labor force participation rate, fell to 62.6 percent, its lowest level in 38 years. During the month, some 432,000 people in the US gave up looking for a job.
The disastrous figures on business investment are perhaps the most telling indicators of the underlying crisis of the capitalist system. The Fed report attributes the sharp decline so far this year primarily to the dramatic fall in oil prices and resulting contraction in investment and construction in the energy sector. But the plunge in oil prices is itself a symptom of a general slowdown in the world economy.
Moreover, a dramatic decline in productive investment is common to all of the major industrialized economies of Europe and North America. In its World Economic Outlook of last April, the International Monetary Fund for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis acknowledged that there was no prospect for an early return to pre-recession levels of economic growth, linking this bleak prognosis to a general and pronounced decline in productive investment.
The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process.
The economic crisis in the US and internationally is not simply a conjunctural downturn. It is a systemic crisis of global capitalism, centered in the US. A defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself.
While the economy is starved of productive investment, entirely parasitic and socially destructive activities such as stock buybacks, dividend hikes and mergers and acquisitions return to pre-crash levels and head for new heights. US corporations have spent more on stock buybacks so far this year than on factories and equipment.
The intractable nature of this crisis, within the framework of capitalism, is underscored by the IMF’s updated World Economic Outlook, released earlier this month, which projects that 2015 will be the worst year for economic growth since the height of the recession in 2009.
In her prepared remarks to Congress last Wednesday and Thursday, Yellen said, “Looking forward, prospects are favorable for further improvement in the US labor market and the economy more broadly.”
She reiterated her assurances that while the Fed would likely begin to raise its benchmark federal funds interest rate later this year from the 0.0 to 0.25 percent level it has maintained since shortly after the 2008 financial crash, it would do so only slowly and gradually, keeping short-term rates well below historically normal levels for an indefinite period.
This was an expected, but nevertheless welcome, signal to the American financial elite, which has enjoyed a spectacular rise in corporate profits, stock values and personal wealth since 2009 thanks to the flood of virtually free money provided by the Fed.
"But as Yellen’s remarks and the Fed report indicate, the explosion of asset values and wealth accumulation at the very top of the economic ladder has occurred alongside an intractable and continuing slump in the real economy."
In her prepared testimony to the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee, Yellen noted the following features of the performance of the US economy over the first six months of 2015:
* A sharp decline in the rate of economic growth as compared to 2014, including an actual contraction in the first quarter of the year.
* A substantial slackening (19 percent) in average monthly job-creation, from 260,000 last year to 210,000 thus far in 2015.
* Declines in domestic spending and industrial production.
In her July 10 speech to the City Club of Cleveland, Yellen cited an even longer list of negative indices, including:
* Growth in real gross domestic product (GDP) since the official beginning of the recovery in June, 2009 has averaged a mere 2.25 percent per year, a full one percentage point less than the average rate over the 25 years preceding what Yellen called the “Great Recession.”
* While manufacturing employment nationwide has increased by about 850,000 since the end of 2009, there are still almost 1.5 million fewer manufacturing jobs than just before the recession.
* Real GDP and industrial production both declined in the first quarter of this year. Industrial production continued to fall in April and May.
* Residential construction (despite extremely low mortgage rates by historical standards) has remained “quote soft.”
* Productivity growth has been “weak,” largely because “Business owners and managers… have not substantially increased their capital expenditures,” and “Businesses are holding large amounts of cash on their balance sheets.”
* Reflecting the general stagnation and even slump in the real economy, core inflation rose by only 1.2 percent over the past 12 months.
The Monetary Policy Report issued by the Fed includes facts that are, if anything, even more alarming, including:
* “Labor productivity in the business sector is reported to have declined in both the fourth quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015.”
* “Exports fell markedly in the first quarter, held back by lackluster growth abroad.”
* “Overall construction activity remains well below its pre-recession levels.”
* “Since the recession began, the gains in… nominal compensation [workers’ wages and benefits] have fallen well short of their pre-recession averages, and growth of real compensation has fallen short of productivity growth over much of this period.”
* “Overall business investment has turned down as investment in the energy sector has plunged. Business investment fell at an annual rate of 2 percent in first quarter… Business outlays for structures outside of the energy sector also declined in the first quarter…”
The report incorporates the Fed’s projections for US economic growth, published following the June meeting of the central bank’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. They include a downward revision of the projection for 2015 to 1.8 percent-2.0 percent from the March projection of 2.3 percent to 2.7 percent.
That the US economy continues to stagnate and even contract is indicated by two surveys released last week while Yellen was testifying before Congress. The Fed reported that factory production failed to increase in June for the second straight month and output in the auto sector fell 3.7 percent. The Commerce Department reported that retail sales unexpectedly fell in June, declining by 0.3 percent.
These statistics follow the employment report for June, which showed that the share of the US working-age population either employed or actively looking for work, known as the labor force participation rate, fell to 62.6 percent, its lowest level in 38 years. During the month, some 432,000 people in the US gave up looking for a job.
The disastrous figures on business investment are perhaps the most telling indicators of the underlying crisis of the capitalist system. The Fed report attributes the sharp decline so far this year primarily to the dramatic fall in oil prices and resulting contraction in investment and construction in the energy sector. But the plunge in oil prices is itself a symptom of a general slowdown in the world economy.
Moreover, a dramatic decline in productive investment is common to all of the major industrialized economies of Europe and North America. In its World Economic Outlook of last April, the International Monetary Fund for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis acknowledged that there was no prospect for an early return to pre-recession levels of economic growth, linking this bleak prognosis to a general and pronounced decline in productive investment.
The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process.
The economic crisis in the US and internationally is not simply a conjunctural downturn. It is a systemic crisis of global capitalism, centered in the US. A defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself.
While the economy is starved of productive investment, entirely parasitic and socially destructive activities such as stock buybacks, dividend hikes and mergers and acquisitions return to pre-crash levels and head for new heights. US corporations have spent more on stock buybacks so far this year than on factories and equipment.
The intractable nature of this crisis, within the framework of capitalism, is underscored by the IMF’s updated World Economic Outlook, released earlier this month, which projects that 2015 will be the worst year for economic growth since the height of the recession in 2009.
Joe Biden's streak of being wrong on foreign policy continues, uninterrupted
In Tuesday night's Democratic debate, Joe Biden claimed a vast array of foreign policy accomplishments in an attempt to make the case that his foreign policy experience made him the best prepared candidate to be commander in chief. But all he did was remind viewers that he has an extensive history of getting it wrong.
Don't just take it from us. In his 2014 memoir, Duty, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates famously shared his view that Joe Biden, then the vice president and previously chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had been wrong about “nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
This amusing fact reared its head again last week as President Trump celebrated what may prove to be the greatest foreign policy triumph of his administration.
Early on Jan. 7, Biden was savaging Trump as “dangerously incompetent” for the strike that had killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps terrorist leader Gen. Qassem Soleimani a few days earlier. Biden claimed that Trump was close to starting an “endless war in the Middle East” and that “this outcome of strategic setbacks, heightened threats, chants of ‘death to America’ once more echoing across the Middle East, [and] Iran and its allies vowing revenge — this was avoidable.”
Of course, literally every part of Biden’s statement was wrong. Iranians loyal to the current regime have been chanting “death to America” for decades and were, in fact, doing so the very day Iran signed the nuclear agreement with Biden and his old boss, President Barack Obama. Much more importantly, as Biden spoke, the Iranians were just hours away from launching a toothless, face-saving retaliatory attack that demonstrated their lack of resolve and their aversion to conflict. For the sake of domestic political theater, the ayatollah and his minions launched 17 missiles that exploded harmlessly at and around a base that had been cleared two hours earlier.
Political scientist Ian Bremmer, certainly no fan of Trump, was unequivocal in describing what a coup this was for Trump. “Literally, the United States has killed the head of Iran's military in the Cabinet, and the response has been, you know, virtually nothing.”
Trump, aware of his victory, responded the following morning not with the bluster or intemperance often associated with his personality but with a brilliant and disciplined speech calculated to de-escalate the situation and pave the way to a new nuclear agreement. He may or may not get one. But either way, Biden was wrong — as usual.
This is the man who once tried to dissuade Obama from his operation against terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden; who supported the Iraq War and said in 2003, “I voted to go into Iraq, and I’d vote to do it again;" and who vocally opposed President Ronald Reagan's military buildup and the Strategic Defense Initiative, which helped bring down the Soviet Union.
In Tuesday night's debate, Biden claimed he had atoned for his Iraq War vote by spearheading President Obama's 2011-2012 withdrawal from Iraq. But that withdrawal was a disaster and it led to the rise of ISIS. Biden famously boasted at the time, “I’ll bet you my vice presidency [Prime Minister Nouri al] Maliki will extend the [Status of Forces Agreement]” with Iraq to maintain a military presence in the country. Lucky for him, no one took the bet, because Biden failed in his negotiations. Even if the entire thing wasn’t his fault, it was a consequential failure. The subsequent hasty withdrawal from Iraq led directly to the rise of ISIS.
Gates also points to Biden as a chief advocate of the Obama administration’s controversial dependence upon drone strikes and special forces raids as a substitute for a broader counterterrorism policy. This is controversial as a question of human rights, given that American citizens were targeted without trial and that many civilians were killed. It also raises doubts about Biden’s sincerity in condemning the strike on Soleimani. Where were these humanitarian instincts during the Obama administration?
And then, of course, there is the Iran nuclear deal. Biden defends the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran. In excluding from negotiations Iran’s terrorist paramilitary activity in the region and its appalling human rights record, the abandoned deal was chiefly interesting in that it preemptively treated Iran as a nuclear power in negotiations before it even had a bomb.
Thankfully, those currently in power have consistently ignored Biden. As a result, instead of living off the fat of sanctions relief, Tehran now finds itself much chastened for its many provocations. Its militiamen will surely look over their shoulders next time they arrive in foreign countries such as Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen to conduct their terrorist operations.
The theocratic regime is even under fire for the malicious incompetence it showed in shooting down a civilian passenger jet airliner. Trump has forced it to de-escalate without taking the meaningful “revenge” that Biden wrongly (again) predicted, and we might well be on the way to a real nuclear deal that, unlike the one Biden supported, makes meaningful demands of the ayatollah.
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