Why the US Economy Has Not Recovered in 10 Charts

schiffgold.com ^ | March 24, 2015 | Mike Finger

[John W]

Peter Schiff isn’t the only one warning that the economic data of the United States is much worse than the media portrays. Michael Snyder has shared 10 charts pulled straights from the Federal Reserve’s own records that show how things have gotten worse since last crisis, not better. Some of these are points Peter has raised time and again, such as the low labor force participation rate. You can see it has been ticking steadily lower since the turn of the millennium.

However, Snyder goes on at length about a number of other important data points. Whether he is looking at the ballooning national debt or the velocity of money, he draws attention to the most important key fact:

"…Focus on the last shaded gray bar on each chart which represents the last recession. As you will see, our economic problems are significantly worse than they were just before the financial crisis of 2008. That means that we are far less equipped to handle a major economic crisis than we were the last time.”

The national debt has nearly doubled since the 2008 crisis.

The homeownership rate has fallen to a 20-year low.

Here’s a chart for the inactivity rate for men aged 25-54.

"If things are ‘getting better,’ then why are so many men in their prime working years doing nothing at all? Just prior to the last recession, the inactivity rate for men in their prime working years was about 9 percent. Today it is just about 12 percent.”

Household income is perhaps one of the most immediate gauges of whether or not the average American’s economic outlook has improved. While the median household income has started to barely tick up in the past couple years, it is still dramatically lower than it was before the crisis.

"I have shared these next numbers before, but they bear repeating. In America today, most Americans do not make enough to support a middle class lifestyle on a single salary. The following figures come directly from the Social Security Administration…

39 percent of American workers make less than $20,000 a year. 52 percent of American workers make less than $30,000 a year. 63 percent of American workers make less than $40,000 a year. 72 percent of American workers make less than $50,000 a year.”

You can see the rest of the charts at the Economic Collapse Blog, but even just this sampling makes it obvious that America has bigger problems than Washington and the Federal Reserve let on. How are they able to obscure this fundamental reality? Mostly by allowing the asset bubble in stocks and the housing market to continue to inflate. Those who spend their days studying the economy get wrapped up in their daily profits and new stock highs, missing the bigger picture.

These speculators ignore not only the experience of Main Street Americans represented in these charts, but also the elephant in the room: If the economy has recovered, why hasn’t the Fed raised interest rates? The answer is clear: an economy that is worse off than it was when interest rates were higher cannot sustain an interest rate hike. At least, not with an even worse crisis than what came before…

[1010RD]

My pleasure.

[Georgia Girl 2]

The only people who haven’t figure out we are in the toilet are crackheads.

[John W]

U.S. stocks traded sharply lower on Wednesday as investors weighed the impact of the dollar on the U.S. economy and the coming earnings season.

“Durable goods were pretty awful,” said Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst at The Lindsey Group. Also getting hit are “biotechs, the poster boy for stock market speculation. They’ve had an extraordinary run.”

[SkyPilot]

the average Joe is trying to hang onto his job and pay for increasingly expensive food and fuel; which the official government statistics discard when measuring inflation.

And they lie about inflation for two main reasons:

1. Political/Selfish - (it would make their own sorry rear ends look bad if the economy were really bad, and that could endanger their own cushy jobs)

2. Money - if they acknowledge the real inflation rate, they would have to pay more to Social Security recipients, DoD doctors, FBI agents, military retirees, etc.