"President Obama is presiding over a rich man's economic rebound"

[Better Believe It]

Why this is a rich man's recovery
By Michael Brush
MSN Money

A rising tide is supposed to lift all boats. In the Obama recovery, however, the high-end yachts are doing much better than the dinghies.

On the one hand, the country is still out the 8 million jobs that vanished during the recession. One in six people is out of work, and many who have jobs are worried about losing them. Though job losses have hit every level, the wealthy have bigger cushions to fall back on.

On the other hand, the stock market has rebounded sharply; it's up about 70% from the lows of a year ago. Driven by this, household net worth advanced $5.7 trillion from last March to $54.2 trillion at the end of last year. The benefits tilt strongly toward the wealthy, who have proportionally more of their money, and simply more money, invested.

Here's something else that helps the wealthy: Though hiring is scarce, executive bonuses are flowing, and they are definitely back on Wall Street after falling sharply in 2008. And sales at Tiffany's flagship store in New York City shot up 20% over the past holiday season.

The bottom line: Although President Barack Obama's $800 billion stimulus package, along with the bank and auto-sector bailouts, were meant to lift the economy as a whole, the effects so far have been felt mostly by the wealthy. Obama is presiding over a rich man's economic rebound.

Please read the full article at:

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/CompanyFocus/why-this-is-a-rich-mans-recovery.aspx

[leftstreet]

1. ouch

K&R

[USArmyParatrooper]

6. lol You need to come up with a better exclamatory remark than, "ouch"

Come on, you can do better. Come up with supportive commentary that at least appears sincere.

[leftstreet]

7. Are you drunk?

:shrug:

[inna]

9. what are you babbling about?

:wtf:

[Skittles]

2. don't worry; it will trickle down

won't it? :o

[Better Believe It]

4. I don't like someone trickling on me.

[TexasObserver]

3. In every recovery, the vultures eat first.

They're the ones who don't mind picking the bones of the departed.

[Better Believe It]

8. And after the vultures are done there is nothing left for us!

[USArmyParatrooper]

5. Sorry to disappoint but...

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jul/27/timothy-geithner/geithner-claims-us-had-six-months-positive-job-gro/
""We've seen six months of positive job growth by the private sector." "


http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2010/0903/Unemployment-rate-up-to-9.6-percent-but-private-sector-gains-jobs
Private employers added 67,000 jobs in August. But the unemployment rate ticked up from the July figure of 9.5 percent – in part because more people came back into the labor force to look for work.

http://www.factcheck.org/2010/09/did-the-stimulus-create-jobs/


Did the Stimulus Create Jobs?
Yes, the stimulus legislation increased employment, despite false Republican claims to the contrary.

September 27, 2010
Bookmark and Share
Summary

The economic stimulus package is a favorite target of Republican candidates and groups, but more than a few ads falsely claim it did not create or save any jobs. Some recent examples:

* Republican House candidate Dan Debicella charges that Democratic Rep. Jim Himes failed Connecticut’s families because he voted for a "stimulus package that has done nothing to reduce unemployment."
* Rick Scott, the Republican candidate for governor in Florida, says Democrat Alex Sink "backed the failed stimulus bill, which created debt, not jobs."
* Similarly, Sink — who never served in Congress and didn’t vote on the bill — is attacked by the Republican Party of Florida in an ad that says the stimulus "gave us big debt and no jobs."
* Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group that does not have to disclose its donors, aired an ad against Democratic congressional candidate Denny Heck of Washington that claimed the "$787 billion stimulus … failed to save and create jobs." The group has launched similar ads against other Democrats.
* Kristi Noem, a Republican House candidate from South Dakota, calls the measure a "jobless stimulus."

The truth is that the stimulus increased employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million people, compared with what employment would have been otherwise. That’s according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Analysis

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, more commonly known as the stimulus bill, has been featured in more than 130 TV ads this year, according to a database maintained by Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group. In many of those ads, Republicans claim the bill has "failed" (a matter of opinion) or state (correctly) that unemployment has gone up since President Barack Obama signed the bill into law on Feb. 17, 2009. The national unemployment rate was 8.2 percent in February 2009, and it now stands at 9.6 percent, having peaked at 10.1 percent in October 2009.

But it’s just false to say that the stimulus created "no jobs" or "failed to save and create jobs" or "has done nothing to reduce unemployment" – or similar claims that the stimulus did not produce any jobs.

As we have written before, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report in August that said the stimulus bill has "owered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points" and "ncreased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million."

Simply put, more people would be unemployed if not for the stimulus bill. The exact number of jobs created and saved is difficult to estimate, but nonpartisan economists say there’s no doubt that the number is positive.

[ThomCat]

10. Job growth has Yet to reach a lever where it even supplies

jobs for the young people just entering the job market for the first time in any given month, must less does it cover the people losing their jobs during that same month, or any of the backlog of people who have previously lost jobs.

A positive number of jobs created is a good thing, but if that positive number is minuscule compared to the real number of jobs we need, then it's not nearly good enough, is it?

There is a minimum positive number of jobs per month that we need to create. That is the number of jobs that covers the people entering the labor force that month, plus the number the people who got laid off that month. If we get that minimum number, then the total change in out of work people for that month will be 0. No new people will have been added to unemployment that month, because job growth will have equally matched labor growth and layoffs.

We need to start creating several hundred thousand jobs PER MONTH to start seeing a recovery that will affect all of America. Unfortunately, We have a long way to go before this will be anything more than a recovery for the wealthy. :(

[joe black]

16. Figures lie...

Liars figure.

[scheming daemons]

11. At least we got you to finally admit there IS a rebound... baby steps

Then you'll come around to the fact that things are slowly rebounding for EVERYONE...

[inna]

12. "rebounding for EVERYONE" - in whose delusional imagination?

what a thoroughly absurd comment. have you been living under the rock - or perhaps, in a bubble?? just curious what lead to the conclusion that "things are rebounding for EVERYONE".

[jeanpalmer]

13. Even with a true recovery

income inequality would not change. Corporations would not start paying higher wages. They got rich by taking away from the middle class. And there's nothing gonna change that, sad to say. That's the real challenge though -- how to restore the income of the middle class. There's nothing to indicate anyone in the political or upper classes understands the problem. It goes against the capitalist system to even acknowledge the problem. Add to that a political system that's been bought off by the corporations and you can see how the problem will never be addressed. Trickle down will happen, but it won't solve the problem.

[Better Believe It]

14. Most who are finding work accept jobs that pay less with fewer benefits than their previous one.

And for the encore we'll have Congress balancing the budget on the backs on working class people.

The rulers understand the problem. They just won't take action to end it .... unless forced to.

[old mark]

15. Actually the OP is not true...there are overall signs that employment

is rising, and that the depression IS ending. It certainly was set up so that the rich got immensely richer, but that is the way things have been since the rich got rich in the first place. As for the Administration's great love affair with the rich, it is pretty obvious the rich don't feel the same way.

After we all vote in November, let's come back to fighting and trying to push Obama th where he ought to be...letting Republicans gain more power in government certainly does not serve any of us and won't "teach a lesson" to anyone except those stupid enough to not vote.

The position to sit out this election is childish, foolish, stupid, anti-liberal and indefensible.

mark

[Better Believe It]

17. Is this one of them? 39,000 jobs cut in September

Stocks mixed on unexpected job cuts
US companies expectedly shed 39,000 jobs in September.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Dispatch/market-dispatches.aspx?post=1813133&_blg=1,1813133

[Better Believe It]

18. More Economic Recovery: Middle Class Slams Brakes on Spending

Middle Class Slams Brakes on Spending
By SARA MURRAY
October 6, 2010

Middle-class Americans made their deepest spending cuts in more than two decades, slashing spending on such discretionary items as restaurant meals and alcohol during the recession.

Households in the middle fifth of the population sliced their average annual spending to $41,150 in 2009, the Labor Department said Tuesday in its annual spending breakdown. That was down 3.1% from 2007 and 3.5% from 2008, the steepest one-year drop since records began in 1984. The drop came even as those households' after-tax income remained relatively stable over the two years, at an average $45,199.

Meanwhile, the poorest Americans spent more as prices for necessities like food and rental housing climbed. Spending rose 5.6% from 2007 to 2009 for the poorest fifth of consumers, the most of any other income group, despite a 5.5% drop in after-tax income to an average $9,956 a household. In some cases, elderly people and others with low incomes dipped into savings or relied on credit to get by.

"What you're looking at here is people at the bottom trying to hang on," said Timothy Smeeding, public affairs professor and director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. "You can't go below a certain level."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703298504575534341401915382.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5

[maryf]

19. K&Rnt

[Initech]

20. The "I've got mine and fuck you" crowd is aiming to keep it that way.

[Better Believe It]

21. No recession for Neiman Marcus catalog

No recession for Neiman Marcus catalog
by Teresa Mears
MSN Money
October 6, 2010

Million-dollar gifts are back, and this year's Christmas Book is on iPad. $75,000 Camaro convertible or $250,000 houseboat?
It appears that, recession or not, wretched excess is back -- if it ever went away.

After a one-year hiatus, this year's Neiman Marcus Christmas Book is back to advertising gifts for more than $1 million. I want the $1.5 million custom swimming pool artwork by glass artist Dale Chihuly. The pool is extra.

This year, for the first time, you can get the fantasy catalog on iPad, which seems fitting. People who can afford these sorts of gifts certainly would have bought the iPad the moment it arrived, rather than waiting a few generations for the price to drop.

Last year's book was scaled back in deference to the recession, but that restraint is over. As Milton Pedraza, chief executive of consulting firm Luxury Institute, told Reuters:

There's a segment of the population that has gotten even wealthier: Goldman Sachs bankers, Silicon Valley venture capitalists. They have so much money, they don't know what to do with it. They're in the mood to spend and that's what Neiman Marcus is tapping into.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SmartSpending/blog/page.aspx?post=1813248&_blg=1,1813248

You can look at the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog online at:

http://www.neimanmarcus.com/store/catalog/templates/F0.jhtml?itemId=cat33370733&parentId=cat000672&masterId=cat000000&icid=CB_footer_link

[Imagevision]

22. The 8 million jobs that vanished mostly went to India and will never be coming back