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WASHINGTON — The recent financial crisis left the median American family in 2010 with no more wealth than they had in the early 1990s, erasing almost two decades of accumulated prosperity, the Federal Reserve said Monday. The median family, richer than half of the nation’s families and poorer than the other half, had a net worth of $77,300 in 2010, down from $126,400 in 2007, the Fed said. The crash of housing prices explained three-quarters of the loss. This vast loss of wealth was compounded by a loss of income, as the earnings of the median family fell by 7.7...

<p>NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The average American family’s net worth dropped almost 40% between 2007 and 2010, according to a triennial study released Monday by the Federal Reserve.</p>

In an interview im Miami with the Hispanic journalist, Jorge Ramos of Univision, who asked him what he was worth, Mitt Romney claimed he is worth between $150 million to 200 million dollars. http://www.boston.com/Boston/politicalintelligence/2012/01/mitt-romney-says-net-worth-about-million/QYUE2XtKi7rrMubEGYrnwL/index.html Romney is the founding CEO of Bain Capital, one of the largest private equity firms in the world. In a documentary that Newt Gingrich's PAC ran in South Carolina, the value of Bain was put at $65 billion dollars. Founding CEOs usually retain ownership of a large number of shares in the firms that they founded. For example, Microsoft is worth $219 billion, and Bill Gates...

(This post originally ran in May 2010. We've updated it to include the net worth of the leading Republican presidential candidates). 24/7 Wall St. has examined the finances of all forty-three presidents. This article provides net worth figures for each in 2010 dollars. Because a number of presidents, particularly in the early 19th Century, made and lost huge fortunes in a matter of a few years, the number for each man is based on his net worth at its peak. In the case of each president we have taken into account hard assets like land, estimated lifetime savings based on...

Americans' wealth last summer suffered its biggest quarterly loss in more than two years as stocks, pension funds and home values lost value. At the same time, corporations increased their cash stockpiles to record levels. Household net worth fell 4 percent to $57.4 trillion in the July-September quarter, according to a Federal Reserve report released Thursday. It was the sharpest drop since the October-December quarter of 2008 and was the second straight quarterly decline. Household wealth, or net worth, is the value of assets like homes, bank accounts and stocks, minus debts like mortgages and credit cards. The value of...

(Washington, DC) -- The Republican Presidential hopeful known for his "Nine-Nine-Nine" tax reform plan earned 900-thousand-dollars last year. Cain's personal financial information was released today. It shows he was paid 359-thousand-dollars by the Whirlpool Corporation. Cain also pocketed about 165-thousand bucks from his Atlanta-based radio show. He earned 120-thousand-dollars from Hallmark Cards and about 200-grand from farm equipment company Agco Corporation. Herman Cain also reports having assets valued at over three-million-dollars. Cain's tax plan would create nine-percent personal and corporate tax rates.

I grew up in the deep South and once, when I was going to high school, I went to a friend's party. A couple dozen of us were hanging around downstairs, enjoying ourselves, when we found out that the father of the girl who was throwing the party wouldn't let a kid into his house because he was black. You may be wondering if there was any other motive. Maybe the kid mouthed off, he was dressed like a thug, the two of the them had some kind of run-in before...none of that was true. The father was just a...

Income does Not equal Wealth. Net Worth equals Wealth. Income equals Net Work!

The news is good at “what.” It isn’t very good at “why.” Like this story yesterday, about the growing disparity in net worth between whites and non-whites in America. Specifically, while the average white person in America has a net worth of about $113,000, the average black person has a net worth of about $5,000 and the average Latino person comes in at around $6,000. That was the news. Whites are financially worth more than blacks, and that gap is growing significantly, to its greatest point in 25 years, in fact. That was all that was said. That was the...

What are you worth? The United States’ net worth has fallen by trillions, and many see this as the most pressing economic problem of the day. --- SNIP --- Gross Private Domestic Investment has fallen 24 percent since its peak in the second quarter of 2006. But personal consumption expenditures are actually up 11 percent over the same period. Consumption declined only slightly in the third and fourth quarters of 2008. Disposable income was also down slightly in these two quarters but is now 4.6 percent higher than at the start of the recession. --- SNIP --- Don’t blame the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The collapse of U.S. housing and stock prices have likely pushed household net worth down by more than 20 percent in the past year, the Federal Reserve said on Thursday. A Fed study of U.S. family finances estimates median family net worth fell by 17.8 percent while mean net worth declined by 22.7 percent. The mean is the average, and the median is the middle value in a series of numbers. Relative to 2004, median net worth slipped by 3.2 percent while mean net worth tumbled 12.7 percent. The data was released as part of a Fed...

Incredibly, Chandra never told us what total US household net worth is, only supplying the amount of the decrease. Of course, many readers will see the $532.9 billion decline, a very big number, and think the worst -- that our portfolios are disappearing, that our homes are becoming worthless, and that the economy is irretrievably going into the tank (Was that the point, Ms. Chandra?). Additionally, Chandra never told us what has happened to household net worth between the third quarter of 2002, the last time it declined, and the most recently reported quarter. Here are the key numbers Chandra...

WASHINGTON - The net worth of U.S. households climbed to a record high in the final quarter of last year, boosted mostly by gains on stocks, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday. Net worth — the difference between households' total assets, such as houses and bank accounts, and their total liabilities, such as mortgages and credit card debt, totaled $55.6 trillion in the October-to-December quarter. That marked a 2.5 percent growth rate from the third quarter, the previous quarterly record high. Stocks gains helped fuel the increase in net worth, although real-estate gains played a role, too. For all of last...

Rank Name Minimum Net Worth Maximum Net Worth 1 Herb Kohl (D-Wis) $219,098,029 $234,549,004 2 Jane Harman (D-Calif) $168,651,649 $289,045,000 3 John Kerry (D-Mass) $165,741,511 $235,262,100 4 Darrell Issa (R-Calif) $135,862,098 $677,230,000 5 Jay Rockefeller (D-WVa) $78,150,023 $101,579,003 6 Robin Hayes (R-NC) $58,952,196 $59,970,169 7 Charles H. Taylor (R-NC) $56,056,017 $77,341,000 8 Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) $43,343,464 $98,660,021 9 Lincoln D. Chafee (R-RI) $41,153,105 $64,096,019 10 Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) $38,198,170 $90,733,019 11 John McCain (R-Ariz) $25,071,142 $38,043,014 12 Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) $19,978,175 $67,170,000 13 Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass) $19,189,049 $93,043,004 14 John Campbell (R-Calif) $17,004,087 $77,512,000 15 Kenny Ewell...

Startling facts from the recent Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances indicate that the typical American family has about $3,800 in the bank, no retirement account, no mutual funds and no stocks or bonds. Financial planners suggest families do the following to avoid financial ... http://www.financialfitnessohio.com/Main.aspx?MenuItem=580 http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2006/financesurvey.pdf

Washington -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office acknowledged today that a former staff member had removed references to the California Democrat's net worth on the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia, as well as altered entries about her husband Richard Blum's Chinese investments in 1997. A former staff member "independently went on to Wikipedia to correct some material he felt was not appropriate," said Feinstein spokesman Howard Gantman. "The senator was not even aware of it." The changes to the biographies of members of Congress, allegedly by their staffs, have again raised questions about the credibility of the online encyclopedia that has become an...

Washington -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein goes into her 2006 re-election campaign as one of the richest members of the U.S. Senate, an elite club where roughly half the members are millionaires, her annual financial disclosure statement showed Friday. Feinstein is a millionaire in her own right, but her wealth is multiplied many times over by that of her husband, San Francisco-based international investor Richard C. Blum. He is among the richest Senate spouses, along with Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of the Democratic 2004 presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. It's impossible to paint an exact financial picture for Feinstein...

Remember all that talk during the just concluded presidential campaign about this being the worst economy since the Great Depression? Or that President Bush's jobs performance is the poorest since Herbert Hoover was in office? Well, with the close of the 2004 calendar year comes the end of Mr. Bush's first term. Maybe without all the distractions and distortions that accompany a political campaign we can better determine what the real economic results are since our 43rd president was inaugurated. Let's begin with jobs. This past Friday's December employment report paints quite a different picture of the U.S. economy than...

<p>Disclosure forms and recently provided tax returns show that Gephardt lands on the low end when it comes to financial assets among Democratic presidential candidates. He never became rich, the congressman says, because he hasn't wanted to.</p> <p>Source: Candidates financial disclosure forms. Sen. Kerry estimates include $700,000 to $2,400,000 in assets held by Kerry or jointly with his wife; the balance is his wife's, according to Boston Globe.</p>

As is our custom, the February editorials list dollar values for the sales, income, or spending of various institutions, corporations, and individuals. It is up to you to find whatever amusement, amazement, or irony you can. The values are all from published sources, but are not documented in my tally. Total net worth of all households in the U.S.: $40 trillion. The market value of all corporations in the U.S.: $10 trillion. Total value of all home mortgages in the U.S.: $5.6 trillion. Money held in 401(k) plans: $1.5 trillion. Purchases charged to credit cards in 2001: $1.29 trillion. Pension...