| The term red pill and its opposite, blue pill, are pop culture terms that have become a common symbol for the choice between the blissful ignorance of illusion (blue) and embracing the sometimes painful truth of reality (red). |
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We Are in Age of ‘Late Great Depression’: Shiller
The Yale economics professor, who helped devise the Case-Shiller index for housing market trends, and famously called the dotcom bubble of the early 2000s and the housing market bubble later in the decade, told “Squawk Box Europe”that the world is in a “new age of austerity.”
“Our whole economy has been affected by variations in confidence. Central banks are sort of trusted, but the actions they have often affect people’s confidence by appearance rather than substance. We’re not in the most trusting mood now,” Shiller said.
Many economists believe that the embattled euro zone has already entered the second part of a double-dip recession, with official figures due out on May 15 expected to confirm as much.
Policymakers across the Western world have tried to combat slowing growth and the long-term effects of the credit crisis through mass liquidity injections over the past 18 months. These have included the quantitative easing programs in the U.S. and U.K., and the European Central Bank’s long-term refinancing operations.
While these injections have helped restore some health to markets this year, many economists believe the long-term picture is gloomier.
“Quantitative easing is not as prominent a policy as austerity …… Continue reading
The Deindustrialization Of America
The United States is rapidly becoming the very first “post-industrial” nation on the globe. All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers have left them, but the pace at which America is accomplishing this is absolutely amazing. It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution.
The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in the country. But sadly, most Americans do not have any idea what is going on around them.
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Big Shift Coming
The Fall of American Empire | The decline of the West or the Rise of the Rest?
Marwan Bishara is a political analyst. Marwan Bishara was born in Nazareth and is a Palestinian Christian Israeli Arab. He is the younger brother of Azmi Bishara. Bishara’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, The Guardian, Le Monde and The Nation, among other outlets. He is also the chairman of The Galilee Foundation, a UK based charity that provides over 100 students annually with university scholarships. Marwan Bishara has engaged in high-profile public speaking on Middle East and global affairs, in addition to international journalism. He was previously a professor of International Relations at the American University of Paris and a fellow at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes et Sciences Sociales. An author who writes and speaks extensively on global politics, Bishara is an authority on many of today’s most relevant global issues, US foreign policy and the greater Middle East.
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Getting Worse: 40 Undeniable Pieces Of Evidence That Show That America Is In Decline
Is America in decline? That is a very provocative question. I have found that most people that hate the United States are very eager to agree that America is in decline, while a lot of those that love the United States are very hesitant to admit that America is in decline.
Well, I am proud to be an American, but I cannot lie and tell you that America is doing just fine. The pieces of evidence compiled below are undeniable. Our economy is deathly ill and is rapidly getting worse. We were handed the keys to the greatest economic machine in the history of the world and we have wrecked it. But until we are willing to look in the mirror and admit how bad things have gotten, we won’t be ready for the solutions that are necessary. The truth is that there are things that we can do to reverse the decline. It does not have to be permanent. We have gotten away from the things that made America great, and we need to admit that we are on the wrong path and start fixing this country. But if we choose to continue down the road that we are… Continue reading
Typical U.S. family got poorer during the past 10 years
A typical U.S. family got poorer during the past 10 years in the first decade-long income decline in at least a half-century, new federal data show.
edian household income fell 2.3% to $49,445 last year and has dropped 7% since 2000 after adjusting for inflation, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. Income was the lowest since 1996.
Poverty rose, too. The share of people living in poverty hit 15.1%, the highest level since 1993, and 2.6 million more people moved into poverty, the most since Census began keeping track in 1959.
“It’s premature to say this is a permanent change,” says economist Michael Pakko, Arkansas’ state economic forecaster. “We’re still dealing with a severe recession and a slow recovery.”
Standard of living may have declined less than income because the Census doesn’t count most anti-poverty programs — food stamps, medical care, earned income tax credit — as income, he says.
The poor, the young and minorities had the biggest income drops last year. Median income for black households fell 3.2% to $32,068, while non-Hispanic white income fell 1.3% to $54,620, a decline that wasn’t statistically significant.… Continue reading
Middle-class neighborhoods squeezed out, income gap rises
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – American middle-class neighborhoods are on the decline and the divide between the rich and poor is widening, according to a study on Wednesday.
The share of families living in middle-income neighborhoods has dropped to 44 percent in 2007 from 65 percent in 1970, the Stanford University study showed.
The study sponsored by the Sage Foundation and Brown University covered the country’s major 117 metropolitan areas.
It supports views that the income inequality gap is widening and could put the distribution of public resources under the spotlight.
“Given that in 2008 the top 10 percent of earners controlled approximately 48 percent of all income in the United States, the increasing isolation of the affluent from the low and moderate-income families means that a significant portion of society’s resources are concentrated in a smaller and smaller portion of neighborhoods,” the study said.
The study found that the proportion of families living in affluent neighborhoods doubled to 14 percent in 2007 from 7 percent in 1970.
During the same period, the share of families in poor residential areas increased to 17 percent from 8 percent.
While the study did not examine the impact of the 2007-09 recession on residential patterns,… Continue reading
