Washington Possessed (Washington has accelerated its takeover of the economy.)

My Nov. 10, 2008 column warned that big government was walking away as the knockout winner over the private sector in the financial crisis. But it's going much further than I'd feared. The federal government has accelerated its takeover of the economy, adding a mega-trillion-dollar health care entitlement, despite the damage to health care and the national debt this will cause. Washington is frenetically cutting unfunded checks. Capital is being channeled away from small businesses toward big government. Looming on the horizon is the bailout of state and local governments, which will concentrate more and more of the nation's debt onto the diminishing base of federal taxpayers.

Washington's excess spending is now running $1.5 trillion annually, and both the Treasury and the Federal Reserve are relying heavily on short-term credits for funding. The marketable national debt has ballooned to more than $8 trillion, but wait ... the Obama Administration has budgeted an increase to $20 trillion over the next few years, bringing it to more than 90% of GDP. Even that huge sum--$100,000 for every working-age American--doesn't include the rapidly escalating debts of Fannie Mae ( FNM - news - people ) and Freddie Mac ( FRE - news - people ) or the government's unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare. And to keep the debt estimate down the budgeteers are making wishful assumptions that millions of high-paying jobs will reappear and health care reform will pay for itself.

Chicago Sun-Times
suntimes.com Member of Sun-Times Media

Why ‘Gen Y’ should cry
PERSONAL FINANCE | First group in a century unlikely to end up better off than parents
Comments

April 24, 2010
SUN-TIMES STAFF, GANNETT NEWS

“Generation Y” — some 50 million teens and twentysomethings — is the first generation in a century that is unlikely to end up better off financially than their parents, according to a recent research report.

Even before the recession, those in Generation Y faced a range of financial pitfalls as they embraced expensive high-tech gadgets and added credit card debt on to student loans.

“Gen Y” talks finances

THE TROUBLE WITH GENERATION Y

* Only 58 percent pay monthly bills on time, a National Foundation for Credit Counseling 2010 survey found.

* They are the least likely of any generation to be covered by health insurance. Just 61 percent say they were covered by some form of a health plan, according to a Pew Research Center study released in February.

* Nearly 70 percent of Gen Y members are not building up a cash cushion, and 43 percent are amassing too much credit card debt, says a November MetLife poll.

* Sixty percent of workers 20 to 29 years old cashed out their 401(k) retirement plans when they changed or lost jobs — typically a big financial no-no because such a move squanders retirement assets and forces the recipient to pay a tax penalty, an October study by Hewitt Associates said.

* About 37 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds have been underemployed or out of work during the recession, the highest share among the age group in more than three decades, according to the Pew study.

USA Today

Now, stagnant wages, job insecurity, the decline in employer-sponsored health insurance and retirement benefits, the rapid increase in basic expenses, soaring debt and minimal savings have jeopardized the economic security of the entire generation, according to the report by Demos, a public policy research and advocacy think tank.

“The recession has hit them hard,” says Jose Garcia, associate director of policy and research at Demos, based in New York. “It affects their income potential, their saving potential and their career-ladder potential.”

No standard definition for Generation Y exists, but analysts generally classify anyone born from the 1980s to 2000 as members. Their plight seems as much created by members’ pre-recession personal finance habits as by the misfortune of coming of age as the recession took hold in December 2007.

On average, Gen Yers each have more than three credit cards, and 20 percent carry a balance of more than $10,000, according to Fidelity Investments.

The generation is graduating from college with an average of $23,200 in student debt, according to the most recent data from the Project on Student Debt. That’s a 24 percent increase from 2004.

“They have high, unrealistic expectations,” says Lee Jenkins, author of Lee Jenkins on Money and a managing partner of Atlanta Capital Group in Atlanta. “And many of them don’t manage money very well.”

And the unemployment rate for Gen Y remains much higher than the national rate. In March, the national rate was 9.7 percent, compared with 18.8 percent for workers younger than 25, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“The economy has given them a dose of reality,” says Jenkins.

And unlike their parents, who had the G.I. Bill and pension plans, those in Generation Y have few safety nets.

Faced with financial setbacks, Gen Y members are starting to be more realistic. More than half of them, 55 percent, say they are watching their spending very closely now, up from 43 percent in 2006, according to the Pew Research Center.

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