Achieving Economic Stability? U.S. Poverty, Food Stamp, Debt At All Time High

...and Median Household Income has fallen for five years in a row. Things are looking ugly and we have 3 more years of a left-fascist government to go.

Lets look at some facts:

Census: Americans in Poverty Jumps 6.6M to Record 46.5M

(from CNSNews.com) – During the four years that marked President Barack Obama’s first term in office, the real median income of American households dropped by $2,627 and the number of people in poverty increased by approximately 6,667,000, according to data released today by the Census Bureau.

The record total of approximately 46,496,000 people in the United States who are now in poverty, according to the Census Bureau, is more than twice the population of Syria, which, according to the CIA, has 22,457,336 people.

In 2008, the year Obama was elected, real median household income in the United States was $53,644 according to the Census Bureau. In 2012, the last full year of Obama’s first term, median household income was $51,017. Thus, real median household income dropped $2,627—or 4.89 percent—from 2008 to 2012.

Record Food Stamp Rolls Outnumber Entire Population of Northeast USA

(CNSNews.com) – A record 23,116,928 American households were enrolled in the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—AKA food stamps—during the month of June, according to data released this month by the Department of Agriculture.

That outnumbers the 20,618,000 households that the Census Bureau estimated were in the entire Northeastern United States as of the second quarter of 2013.

So it seems that Americans’ overall access to basic needs is close to record-low as well;
More Americans Struggle to Afford Food

WASHINGTON, D.C. — More Americans are struggling to afford food — nearly as many as did during the recent recession. The 20.0% who reported in August that they have, at times, lacked enough money to buy the food that they or their families needed during the past year, is up from 17.7% in June, and is the highest percentage recorded since October 2011. The percentage who struggle to afford food now is close to the peak of 20.4% measured in November 2008, as the global economic crisis unfolded.

The Greatest Debt Crisis The World Has Ever Seen Is Coming

The largest mountain of debt in the history of the world just continues to grow even larger, and everyone knows that this colossal debt spiral is not going to end well.  But we all keep playing along because nobody wants the party to end.  Right now, there is an unprecedented ocean of red ink covering the planet.  Globally, governments have never been in so much debt, corporations have never been in so much debt and consumers have never been in so much debt.  But every time someone suggests that this is a problem and that we should at least try to get debt levels to settle down a bit, people start screaming that “austerity” will hurt the global economy.  And of course it will.  But we can’t continue to live way, way above our means indefinitely.  Well, we can try, but at some point this entire house of cards is going to come crashing down and we are going to be facing the greatest economic crisis the world has ever seen.

 

Median Household Income Has Fallen For FIVE YEARS IN A ROW

According to the Census report, the high point for median household income in the United States was back in 1999 ($56,080).  It almost got back to that level in 2007 ($55,627), but ever since then there has been a steady decline.  The following figures come directly from the report, and as you can see, median household income has fallen every single year for the past five years…

2007: $55,627

2008: $53,644

2009: $53,285

2010: $51,892

2011: $51,100

2012: $51,017

How far does that number have to go down before we admit that we have a major problem on our hands?

The new Census report also revealed that 46.5 million Americans are living in poverty.  As CNSNews.com noted, this is far higher than when Barack Obama first entered the White House…

 

During the four years that marked President Barack Obama’s first term in office, the real median income of American households dropped by $2,627 and the number of people on poverty increased by approximately 6,667,000, according to data released by the Census Bureau.

Fiscal Crisis in Chicago: Pensions 31% Funded, Moody’s Downgrades Debt 3 Notches, Pension Liability is $61,000 Per Household; Move over Detroit. The fiscal crisis in Chicago is far bigger.

• Pensions 31% funded
• Moody’s downgraded Chicago Debt 3 Notches (just 4 steps above junk)
• City debt on negative watch
• Pension Liability is $61,000 Per Household ($23,000 Per Capita)

Read more here.
 

The Fed’s Double-Bind

The Fed will blow up the economy if it continues money-pumping, but it will choke off the fragile recovery if it cuts back its money-pumping.

The Federal Reserve is in a classic double-bind as its policies to boost growth bear fruit, interest rates rise, threatening the very recovery the Fed has lavished trillions of dollars of quantitative easing (QE) to generate.

Higher growth naturally leads to higher interest rates, which then choke off growth.

The Fed’s goal was a self-sustaining recovery, in which growth reaches “escape velocity,” i.e. is strong enough to support higher interest rates.

But the pursuit of that goal via trillions of dollars of asset purchases has inflated asset bubbles in stocks and real estate. The Fed’s goal was to push speculative and institutional money into risk assets such as stocks, generating a “wealth effect” that was supposed to spill over into the real economy via higher borrowing and spending….