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The median net worth of American households has dropped to a 43-year low as the lower and middle classes appear poorer and less stable than they have been since 1969. According to a recent study by New York University economics professor Edward N. Wolff, median net worth is at the decades-low figure of $57,000 (in 2010 dollars). And as the numbers in his study reflect, the situation only appears worse when all the statistics are taken as a whole. According to Wolff, between 1983 and 2010, the percentage of households with less than $10,000 in assets (using constant 1995 dollars)...

Hoping to encourage other Americans to participate in "Small Business Saturday" as an alternative to big chain-friendly Black Friday, President Obama today visited an Arlington, Va., bookstore to cross some items off his family's Christmas list. Accompanied by his daughters Sasha and Malia, the president journeyed across the river to One More Page Books, which the White House described as an "independent, neighborhood bookstore." After consulting his Blackberry for an apparent holiday wish list, he purchased 15 children's books before even browsing the store.

The Federal Reserve is asking 30 big banks to make sure their capital can withstand a deep recession in which the unemployment rate rises to 12%. The Fed, which first required big banks to conduct “stress tests” in 2009, laid out three scenarios lenders have to test against. The goal is to ensure that the firms have enough capital to continue operations during stressful economic times.

Most conservatives believe that the re-election of President Barack Obama is going to bring dire economic circumstances over the next four years, which could possibly drive the Nation into total collapse.The belief is likely not far-fetched considering the current state of affairs in American economics as the United States hurls toward a “fiscal cliff” which will combine rising tax rates and government shutdowns, the government prepares to raise its debt limit again to the tune of $2.4 trillion and the number of Americans out of work continues to trend at dismal levels.All of the ominous headlines about the shape of...

2008 - "You can fool all the people some of the time ..." 2010 - "...and you can fool all of the people some of the time..." But in 2012, Obama and Big Leftist Media managed to fool all of the people all the time! Now it's official, the freeloaders have taken over the country.

[written September, 2011, but even more applicable today] Re:  Could this time have been different?Ezra Klein     Washington Post columnistEzra Klein: Some partisans offer a simple explanation for the depth and severity of the recession: It’s the stimulus’s fault. If we had done nothing, they say, unemployment would never have reached 10 percent.This is the wrong way to look at it. The unemployment rate numbers are so skewed as to be virtually worthless. For instance, if all of the people that have given up searching for jobs were included in today’s unemployment rate it would be over 11%: Townhall Total employment is...

Hi all, I hesitated for a long time to post this--particularly because our keyboard is so sticky it is difficult to write and post. I was just hoping for some advice. If I posted in the wrong place, I hope the mods will move it. Julie

When leading pundits, pollsters and prognosticators seem to agree that the re-election of President Obama is all but inevitable, why do grassroots Democrats seem so anxious and depressed? If the president’s most ardent supporters feel soul-deep certainty that their candidate has richly earned another term in office, then how is it that they universally acknowledge that he’ll draw far fewer votes than he did as an untried freshman senator four years ago? A revealing report by Joe Garofoli in the San Francisco Chronicle found local liberals “so freaked out about the prospect of President Obama losing his re-election bid that...

When it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s," President Barack Obama told Mitt Romney in their final debate. Obama got sloppy here. Presumably, the president was suggesting the 1920s represent economic failure. The decade represents just the opposite, as measured by the very goals on which the Democrats base their 2012 presidential campaign. Growth: Obama has spoken often and forcefully about economic growth. In just one debate, the second one, the president used the...

The Department of Labor's WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) website may have been exempt from layoff notices related to the fiscal cliff, but it still provides a sufficiently (bleak) complete picture about the real nature of layoffs and business cycle in general in America's busiest city. Which is why it was precisely using the WARN website that we learned that one of New York's most historic steakhouses, "NY's Prime Steakhouse since 1927" Gallagher's, located on 52nd street, and which survive the great depression, is shutting down on January 16. Surely neither the surging price of meat, nor the ability...

Autumn is here, the leaves are turning color and existing home sales declined -1.7% in September. Here is my Fox Business interview with Laurie Rothman on the the housing recovery (and icebergs in its path). To be sure, there are stil supply problems such as over 2 million foreclosed homes still in pre-sale. Also, problems such as negative equity persist. Until housing prices rise more and negative equity fades away, supply problems are likely to continue in many parts of the nation. This comes on the heels of a excellent housing start report, partly fueled by The Fed’s massive purchase...

Creative types are thought to be more likely to suffer from mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. A new large-scale study of the Swedish population helps confirm this link. Last year, researchers at the Karolinska Institutet near Stockholm found that families with a history of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia were more likely to produce artists and scientists. They built on this evidence in a new study, published this month in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, which covers a larger population sample and a wider scope of psychiatric diagnoses...

The picture below shows $15 trillion dollars worth of $100 bills on $10 million dollar pallets stacked on top of each other over an area that is one third larger than a regulation football field. An electronics van is parked between the stack and the Statue of Liberty. A single $100 million dollar pallet rests in front of the truck’s cab. See it?Recently, I reported that the Federal Reserve Bank (FED) secretly gave ten trillion dollars of interest-free loans to over a dozen European banks to shore up the Euro and keep them financially solvent. I later found out that...

Scientists are testing the idea that the stress of modern city life is a breeding ground for psychosis. In 1965, health authorities in Camberwell, a bustling quarter of London's southward sprawl, began an unusual tally. They started to keep case records for every person in the area who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder or any other psychiatric condition. Decades later, when psychiatrists looked... --snip-- Yet the results of his study, published last year in Nature (F. Lederbogen et al. Nature 474, 498–501; 2011), clearly showed that people who grow up in cities process negative emotions such as stress...

The rise in the consumer confidence rose more than expected. Despite real GDP growth hovering barely above 1% and the crash in durable goods orders, this is indeed a surprise. Or is it another Fed induced bubble? According to University of Michigan, consumer confidence has risen to Bush-era levels of September 2007. Just to put it into context, I put a yellow line through the 100 level. We still have a long way to go to get to 100 from 83.1. Here is a chart of wage income divided by GDP. Why are consumers more confident? Perhaps consumers are reacting...

<p>A devastating economic depression is rapidly spreading across the largest economy in the world. Unemployment is skyrocketing, money is being pulled out of the banks at an astounding rate, bad debts are everywhere and economic activity is slowing down month after month. So who am I talking about? Not the United States - the economy that I am talking about has a GDP that is more than two trillion dollars larger. It is not China either - the economy that I am talking about is more than twice the size of China. You have probably guessed it by now - the largest economy in the world is the EU economy.</p>

In any given year, 7% of adults suffer from major depression, and at least 1 in 10 youth will reckon with the disorder at some point during their teenage years. But about 20% of these cases will not respond to current treatments; for those that do, relief may take weeks to months to come. There is one treatment, however, that works much faster: the anesthetic and “club drug” ketamine. It takes effect within hours. A single dose of ketamine produces relief of depression that has been shown in studies to last for up to 10 days; it also appears to...

JOHN HUSSMAN: We Are Already In Recession, And The Economists Just Don't Know It Yet Joe WeisenthalOct. 1, 2012, 5:00 AM In his latest weekly letter, investor John Hussman reiterates his belief that we are already in recession. In regard to a U.S. recession, keep in mind that the consensus of economic forecasters – not to mention central bankers - has never recognized the start of a recession in real-time, largely because their assessments typically revolve around a “stream of anecdotes” approach that treats each new economic report with equal weight, without distinguishing leading/lagging and upstream/downstream structure. For example, we’ve...

You will never guess what the fifth and sixth best-selling prescription drugs are in the United States, so I’ll just tell you: Abilify and Seroquel, two powerful antipsychotics. In 2011 alone, they and other antipsychotic drugs were prescribed to 3.1 million Americans at a cost of $18.2 billion, a 13 percent increase over the previous year, according to the market research firm IMS Health. Those drugs are used to treat such serious psychiatric disorders as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and severe major depression. But the rates of these disorders have been stable in the adult population for years. So how did...

Americans are experiencing sticker shock and it is about to get a whole lot worse thanks to Obama. Between gas and groceries, our household is sinking fast. My husband works about 35 miles from here, so gas is an issue. For a household of three, where two drive for work, our gas bill this month will be close to $900. Groceries will come in at a modest $1000 since we have cut back. And folks, we live in a state that has reasonable pricing. Inflation is just clearing her throat and getting ready to sing, so this is going to...