Reminds me of the story my dad tells of my grandma getting her Dusenberg gas in the 30s. The attendant asked her to turn off the engine so he could catch up. 3 banks a week in my honest assessment leaves the banking system a little further behind every Monday. The moral hazard created by indicating to the remaining zombie banks that they could have months if not years to further corrupt the financial system.
HomeGnome
those are estimated losses. the FDIC is taking bigger hits than they initially estimate when the individual loans go to auction, and they don't include any losses from the loss sharing agreements as part of announced figure
Rob Dawg wrote:
Reminds me of the story my dad tells of my grandma getting her Dusenberg gas in the 30s.
I never knew you were descended from the bourgeoisie
Now that my secret is out I can tell stories of taking the Packard to the prom and tall tales of fraternity pranks.
Anyone who believes in the upside of the U.S. stock market here should ask (and answer) a simple question:
Where is the committed demand for U.S. stocks going to come from?
By "committed demand," I mean patient buy-and-hold type investors. These investors are the bedrock of any stock market. They enable all the opportunistic trading around the periphery. Let's see where committed demand traditionally has come from, and where these segments are now.
J6P investors have lost their appetite for domestic stocks, as shown by ICI weekly cash flow statistics. We may now be seeing a consistent mutual fund outflow trickle that will grow into a flood.
Participant-directed retirement plans (such as 401ks) are on the downslope.
Hedge funds can (and will) turn their commitment to the short side of the market as easily as to the long side.
Foreign investors can't be very eager buy-and-hold until the dollar shows signs of firming.
Pension funds are not only facing funding crises. They are facing income or cashflow crises as boomers retire, on schedule and early. Pensions can't afford to take a long-term view. They need more liquidity than the stock market offers.
Endowments and foundations don't need to buy the broad stock market and indexes, with all their broken, debt-ridden, downslope companies -- and they especially don't need the R2000 at an infinite P/E ratio. For their committed demand for stocks, they can cherry-pick the best private equity companies and private placement at a forward P/E under 10.
There is no source of committed demand right now. Therefore, the U.S. stock market is more vulnerable now than at just about any other time in recent history.
I wouldn't bet against the S&P 500 too much, mainly because that's where any committed demand that's left will go.
I would bet against the outskirts of the stock market and especially broad indexes selling at ridiculous P/Es for which risk is enormous and committed demand has vanished. Short the Russell 2000 with RWM, or, if you are aggressive, TWM. Right here, right now.
ANDERSON, S.C. -- Authorities say two missing South Carolina boys who sparked school lockdowns have been found.
Multiple media outlets report a 13-year-old boy and his adopted 12-year-old brother were found Thursday in a country club subdivision in Anderson. They were located hours after police reported they were missing and carrying guns and camping supplies they took from their home.
Four public schools and one private school close to the boys' home were placed on lockdown as a precaution during the search.
Anderson County School District 5 spokesman Bill Baker said authorities had no reason to think the boys intended to harm anyone. He said the brothers come from a family of avid hunters.
The boys had recently been disciplined by their parents for bad grades on their report cards.
---South Carolina is the comedy show that keeps on giving.
Rob Dawg
Just looked it up, wow, the Dusenberg was/is some car. I wasn't even kidding on the basis of owning a car in the 30s. My parents didn't even have fridges growing up in the 50s/60s. I'll probably never be as hard workers as they are fwiw.
No need to add C, BAC or WFC to the list, right ? I mean, they're all clearly solvent under stress Treasury stress testing, so no need to look at them.
Any one of those basket case operations individually would swamp the asset on the watch list by a mile.
Where is the committed demand for U.S. stocks going to come from?
Baby boomers are still mostly in their peak earning and saving years. Internationally, Chinese income, and income in emerging markets generally, is still growing as a share of total world income. Their savings rates are much higher than ours, and exceeds the investment opportunities in their domestic economies, so a lot of the global increase in savings is coming here.
Not all the money from these two sources will go directly into stocks, but the bond purchases will keep interest rates low and displace other buyers into stocks.
I admittedly self-filter a lot of the financial media, but that was an open and fun piece if nothing else. Who knew there was such a difference between msnbc and cnbc
Just looked it up, wow, the Dusenberg was/is some car.
Yep. Friend's father bought two trashed out in the sixties for something like 200 bucks. Father is gone but he and his brother are finally getting close to restoring one. Auburn body I think.
Voting is the slave's suggestion box! It doesn't matter if you choose the welfare-warfare party or the warfare-welfare party. Mad Max is preferable to Big Brother.
A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.
-Lysander Spooner
Just to let you guys know, this absent minded philosopher has been known to faint at the sound of the word needle (don't ask....long story I was a sick kid in Germany with scarlet fever and got traumatized by a group of Army doctors who hadn't seen a real case before)....anyway as my face is turning pale...can we please talk about something else besides injections? Pretty please?
Voting is the slave's suggestion box! It doesn't matter if you choose the welfare-warfare party or the warfare-welfare party. Mad Max is preferable to Big Brother.
energyecon wrote:
I want a menu with more options...
.
Canada is not merely a neighbour to Negroes. Deep in our history of struggle for freedom Canada was the North Star. The Negro slave, denied education, de-humanized, imprisoned on cruel plantations, knew that far to the north a land existed where a fugitive slave, if he survived the horrors of the journey, could find freedom. The legendary underground railroad started in the south and ended in Canada. The freedom road links us together. Our spirituals, now so widely admired around the world, were often codes. We sang of 'heaven' that awaited us, and the slave masters listened in innocence, not realizing that we were not speaking of the hereafter. Heaven was the word for Canada and the Negro sang of the hope that his escape on the underground railroad would carry him there. One of our spirituals, 'Follow the Drinking Gourd', in its disguised lyrics contained directions for escape. The gourd was the big dipper, and the North Star to which its handle pointed gave the celestial map that directed the flight to the Canadian border.
Martin Luther King Jr.
MLK Jr was painting an exceptionally rosy portrait of the country, but just sayin' ...
TOT alert
Afghanistan is the biggest locus of what must be the original best cash crop. So, it should have plenty of money. So, why's it so F'd up......
The county (or city?) commission no longer has
a quorum due to 3 commisssioners resigning due to
corruption of various kinds--no conspiracy between them.
The county/or city atty sez the governor can appoint a 4th
person so there's a quorum.
The offenses seemed to be very small potatoes and ordinary.
Unlike that lawyer who seems to have spent (with others?) almost
a billion dollars. And he came back here from where he was.
It just can't be about stuff. It's got to be about getting an adrenaline rush.
Internationally, Chinese income, and income in emerging markets generally, is still growing as a share of total world income.
It's an interesting idea. What I've learned about affluent Asians is that they have been very slow to accept stock market risk, especially in foreign stocks. In India, the affluent (including my extended family) actually lean toward their own domestic stocks over foreign stocks, mainly because these are companies they know and understand. I think affluent Asians are even less interested in foreign stocks now than two years ago, and that's a big driver behind the relentless accumulation in gold. Gold is their version of CDs.
okay, off to bed with me...you can resume your needle talk. Don't know why that set me off tonight, probably just the mental image...but man I don't know how people dope up with shots. I guess they aren't extremely painful for everyone else or I am just a wimp...but shots always feel like someone is ripping a vein out of my arm. My boys are great soldiers though, take it like a man while daddy waits outside so he doesn't pass out. Funny, had no problems being in the delivery room and helping my wife through childbirth twice...well you guys know how to incapacitate me now...just run at me with needles Night everyone.
i have enjoyed the times I've been in Canada working, all in Alberta (go figure lol)...also driving my 'summer commute' between the parents' homestead in Alaska and graduate school in Colorado...the one interaction with the health care system in Canada was a dream, as part of a group of students in a vehicle accident near Beaver Creek - I helped the nurse there with the teardowns maintaining the sterile field when she put a few stitches in one of the other students from UAF and she was downright apologetic about charging ~$5 CDN for some antibiotic ointment - that would have been a multi-kilobuck event in a US ER except that there were NO medical facilities the other side of the border...many fond memories of Calgary.
EHP,
If you read Douglass' Autobiography of a Slave or others of the genre, I don't think MLK's vision is particularly rosy, given the Dred Scott case and its implications,if you happen to have been born with the wrong skin color. When I started 1st grade, I moved to a grade school in Missouri that had been desegregated a few years earlier, so it wasn't oh so very long ago that the kids I went to school with would have been going to a school considerably less well equipped than the one I attended. And I just turned 50.
So, no, the Great White North sounded pretty darn good for quite a long time in this "free" country of ours, the U.S. of A.
I get a little cynical about the Southern Christian conservatives waxing red in the face about affirmative action, given that they would cheerfully have been selling the chilluns down the river at any sign of deflation or disobedience and a few, like Beck and the druggie Rush, probably would be willing to do it tomorrow, if given the opportunity. So, yeah, Canada can sound pretty darn good.
"Anyone who believes in the upside of the U.S. stock market here should ask (and answer) a simple question:
Where is the committed demand for U.S. stocks going to come from?"
The richest 1 percent of all families in america own more than half of all outstanding stocks, all financial securities, and all business assets. the top 10 percent own almost everything.
the super rich own the banks, the brokerages and the insurance companies
they are at the head of the line when it comes to getting the cheap free money being handed out by the federal reserve
stocks will rise as the dollar is destroyed because that is required by " the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today!" (network, the movie)
The average baby boomer will be earning a lot less, and saving a lot less, in the future.
So how is that positive for stocks? The future starts now, right?
Not just yet. The baby boomers are aged 45-64. Since peak saving years are 40-65, that means we've been at peak baby boomer saving for a while, and we will be for another few years. Indians and others don't have to have any direct interest in US stocks to keep demand high. A high demand for assets in one place simply displaces some of that demand to other assets in other places. That's one key reason why low interest rates tend to boost stock prices, even for unleveraged companies.
Foreign investors can't be very eager buy-and-hold until the dollar shows signs of firming.
Better stocks than cash for foreigners, no?
Pension funds are not only facing funding crises. They are facing income or cashflow crises as boomers retire, on schedule and early. Pensions can't afford to take a long-term view. They need more liquidity than the stock market offers.
Only cash is more liquid than most stocks. Bonds are often very illiquid. So where do the pension funds go?
But yeah, based on what has happened to a lot of small stocks over the last couple of years, I can see shorting those indices. better still would selective shorts if you could find an ETF that selected for lousy balance sheets.
I would bet against the outskirts of the stock market and especially broad indexes selling at ridiculous P/Es for which risk is enormous and committed demand has vanished. Short the Russell 2000 with RWM, or, if you are aggressive, TWM. Right here, right now.
rich, there's a flaw in your scheme. Bernanke et al can keep printing to support MBS and treasuries til doomsday. They are doing great so far. You'd have poor returns this year betting against the Fed. Even if the dollar accelerates in decline, maybe especially, won't stocks keep rising as they have so far? (see any KD post this week for his USD vs SPY)
sm_landlord "Only cash is more liquid than most stocks. Bonds are often very illiquid. So where do the pension funds go?"
Rosie has been covering the huge discrepancy between money market outflows going 10-1 to bonds and hybrids (I think he means balanced funds by this, but someone correct me if I'm wrong on that), rather than stock funds for quite some time. I'd be curious whether these are primarily individual investors, like me, or whether these figures include pension funds. But I haven't seen any analysis of changes in pension fund holding, other than CALPERS and a few other supposedly backing off from hedgie investments. I don't trust that coverage in the WSJ, though, since I haven't seen any hard data on pension holdings.
But I think Rosie's right, that boomers are getting religion on the advisability of bonds and a balanced portfolio. We'll see, given the current rise in the market, whether many will get sucked back in to a stock-heavy portfolio.
The richest 1 percent of all families in america own more than half of all outstanding stocks, all financial securities, and all business assets. the top 10 percent own almost everything.
I'll put $50 in the tip jar, right here, right now, if you can produce an authoritative source for this statement.
It's not true. Stock ownership in America is more broadly dispersed now (or last year, at least) than at any time before, mainly due to mutual funds, variable insurance products, IRAs and 401(k)s. The mass stock sell machinery has been very successful. Stop spouting garbage you can't back up.
But I think Rosie's right, that boomers are getting religion on the advisability of bonds and a balanced portfolio. We'll see, given the current rise in the market, whether many will get sucked back in to a stock-heavy portfolio.
I didn't pick up where Rosenberg said the money was going into bonds, I'll have to go back and check.
Most stock are owned by funds, as far as I can tell. And most funds are stock funds that pretty much have to stay invested. So the flow out of stock funds would be the most interesting thing to watch, I think. As I recall, many pension funds have rules about not holding stocks that are priced under $10.00, so it seems that they would have less of an impact on small/penny stocks.
I like Rich's suggestion. I'm trying to figure out a focus and a rationale for what to short.
Bernanke et al can keep printing to support MBS and treasuries til doomsday.
The fallacy is to believe that the Fed creates commitment in demand to buy stocks. I agree that the Fed has probably produced commitment in demand for MBS, in that they will probably own some of these securities until doomsday.
The Fed has enabled liquidity to buy stocks that huge institutional traders and hedge funds have used to pump up domestic stocks, short-term. But as I've said, there's a difference between having unlimited access to leverage and being willing to take huge margin risk. All fingers are now on the itchy trigger.
I know it's hard for younger people to believe that one fundamental part of the Fed's original mandate was to regulate stock market margin. They did this pretty well, until about 20 years ago, through Regulation T.
Then, the Fed started ignoring Reg T. Then came derivatives and unlimited leverage. Then, in the last few years, has come the era in which the Fed has been the biggest promoter and enabler of stock market leverage. But the Fed is under fire, fighting now for its life as we know it. Promoting stock market leverage can't last very long. It has self-destruction built into the concept.
Shunpiking Online Vo.3 No.9 85% of global wealth in hands of 10%
You really have to read the article. They are counting everyone in the world to get that 10% number. Huge parts of the world population do not participate in markets outside of a 10 mile radius.
Once inflation starts getting out of hand in China, and rates rise, it'll be time to short them. How that will mesh with the huge USD destruction going on over here is anyone's guess.
Wealth distribution in the US: It's bad (well past Pareto optimality 20% / 80%) but not that bad... yet. Let us hope it doesn't get even worse, though perhaps that is part of "God's" (as Lord Blankcheck would define him) plan, too.
The Fed has enabled liquidity to buy stocks that huge institutional traders and hedge funds have used to pump up domestic stocks, short-term. But as I've said, there's a difference between having unlimited access to leverage and being willing to take huge margin risk. All fingers are now on the itchy trigger.
So where does the money go when they exit? If it goes into Ts, what happens to TBT?
I'll put $50 in the tip jar, right here, right now, if you can produce an authoritative source for this statement.
"Moreover, the top 1 percent of households accounted for 42 percent of the value of all stock owned in the United States; the top 5 percent accounted for about two-thirds; the top 10 percent for more than three-quarters; and the top 20 percent for almost 90 percent."
The Filipinos and Filapinas around here love the property idea. In 2005 a gal I worked with moved to Murietta (Inland Empire, node of disaster) and kept their mortgaged house in L.A. to rent. The house in Long Beach is only down about 25%, Murietta likely 50%.
Wealth distribution in the US: It's bad (well past Pareto optimality 20% / 80%) but not that bad... yet. Let us hope it doesn't get even worse, though perhaps that is part of "God's" (as Lord Blankcheck would define him) plan, too.
If you look at FRB: 2007 SCF most of that balance is based on household equity. the 2010 SCF should be brutal
Blackhalo
I don't know how they compiled those numbers, but near half of US equity share ownership is foreign owned. You can back out how much ownership each quintile had in the 2007 SCF FRB: 2007 SCF
The top x% are going to own a lot, but those numbers must be for the world and not just the US
I would have to see the raw data before I would believe the assertions.
Agreed. But I have seen these numbers, or ones close to them, for quite some time now, from multiple sources. I just picked the first one that popped up in Google. My understanding is that they have gotten even more extreme over the past 5 years.
Yeah, as long as they're not overly leveraged it won't be the massacre it is over here.
One of the most popular terms on irvinehousingblog is FCB, Foreign Cash Buyer. Asians or dual nationals who snap up houses in SoCal with cash offers. They'll lose money when prices fall again, but at least they won't go underwater.
Mutual funds are basically a U.S. invention, since 1924. They've never taken off much in other parts of the world.
There have been so many attempts to get Japanese to buy funds, and virtually all have failed. In Europe, probably not more than 1 person in 10 owns equities through funds.
In between stock funds, the stock portion of hybrid funds (mainly balanced and asset allocation funds), and variable insurance products, there's maybe $5.5 trillion in U.S. stock funds. Probably less than 25% of total global stock market capitalization is in different types of managed or indexed equity funds aimed for individuals.
But this 25% is huge for stock market momentum. The financial establishment persuaded ordinary people not only to have faith in the market but to keep putting their new retirement plan contributions in the market and their reinvested dividends, and to "buy-and-hold" long-term. That base of committed capital, cashflow and acceptance has enabled a lot of other money, such as hedge funds, to flourish. Now, that base has begun eroding seriously. It took 50 years to build, and the outflow won't be stopped in a few years. It's secular.
On similar lines, I believe that the top 10% have 40% or so of consumer discretionary spending.
This may account for some of the resilience in consumer spending, whereas income taxes collected, which fall fairly heavily on the middle-class, have been decimated.
Of course, the very poor, who don't have much money at the best of times, are less affected by the recession.
With the erosion of social and corporate safety nets, tightening credit and declining home equity, most
Americans have little financial cushioning to survive a job loss . Without a steady paycheck, 50% of
Americans say they could not meet their financial obligations for more than a month — and, of that, a
disturbing 28% couldn’t support themselves for more than two weeks of unemployment .
Special thanks from my Mom in Naples, FL. Her condo association had in account with Orion. When Orion appeared on Problem Bank List back in August I told her (she's on the Condo's Board) and they made sure they didn't have more than $250K. So when they failed today they didn't have any unnecessary anxiety.
So where does the money go when they exit? If it goes into Ts, what happens to TBT?
Some may go into bonds temporarily. I'm looking for opportunities to load up on TBT lower than now.
A lot will go into cash. A lot will go into hard assets, such as gold and real estate. A lot will just disappear, meaning that it will either be wiped out or go into hiding. The government wants people to own stocks, bonds and other types of assets with reporting mechanisms. They don't want people to own money that isn't reported.
(quoting mock turtle) The richest 1 percent of all families in america own more than half of all outstanding stocks, all financial securities, and all business assets. the top 10 percent own almost everything. "
Rich said
I'll put $50 in the tip jar, right here, right now, if you can produce an authoritative source for this statement.
i know you want a mainstream source
right now i can document the top 2% own half of the world and the latest figurees for the USA based on household surveys and irs figure indicate as of 1998 the top 2% owned more than half
i believe i read from a reliable source that wealth had concentrated even more in the last 8 years
so im looking for the best source i can find
but the information document with footnotes at wikipedia shows that the wealthiest 2% woned more than half by the turn of the mellinium
ill keep looking and recant the 1% number and change to 2% or ill stand fast...checking
this article indicates top 1% own 33% of all wealth but their definition appears to be different than what i quoted which was half of all stocks bonds and business assets...
so again...im closing in on it
right now i may be off by 1 percent..ie 2% own half of everything of investment value in the usa...but we will see
but i stick with my observation that the super wealth are at the head of the food chain and they are far and away the majority owners of america and will use the bernanke printing press to keep their assets at a notional value that compensates for the falling dollar
EHP - Thus the importance, from a demographic standpoint, of programs to keep people in their homes, and attempts to prop up this asset class, I guess. Unfortunate for all that it's built on an extremely fragile house of cards - the numbers looked so nice
Yeah I could not stop laughing. He does it again on the floor reading off the dead in each (R) district that is brutal as well but gets cut off somehow.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. paid off at face value some junior-ranking slices of two collateralized debt obligations at the potential expense of more-senior classes that now are likely to default, according to Fitch Ratings.
Not true. Not by a long shot. More spouted statistics.
No need to get hostile, it was an honest mistake and there's plenty of fog for me to hide behind what with domestically managed but foreign owned assets or contingent claims from swaps if I were hostile myself. I was wrong, but would have been accurate if I had said claims on fixed income (I say claims to include all CDOs)
Here's a relevant report prepared for Congress last January, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL34319.pdf
the best it does is track official fund flows in reference to the aforementioned fog
the super wealth are at the head of the food chain and they are far and away the majority owners of america and will use the bernanke printing press to keep their assets at a notional value that compensates for the falling dollar
What amazes me is how much of the <50% they have convinced have a chance of being in the top 5%, when there is no way, no how, short of being Tiger Woods.
I admittedly self-filter a lot of the financial media, but that was an open and fun piece if nothing else. Who knew there was such a difference between msnbc and cnbc
We've all discussed the space option on more than one occasion in the CR threads. Maybe Ratigan or his writers lurk here once in a while?
mock turtle wrote:
the super wealth are at the head of the food chain and they are far and away the majority owners of america and will use the bernanke printing press to keep their assets at a notional value that compensates for the falling dollar
Why would they not just hold cash and let it appreciate through asset deflation? Poor folk, by definition, don't hold large amounts of cash, nor do the middle or upper-middle class. Bills to pay and stuff to buy. They do, however, have homes and cars, as well as stocks. The richer you are, the more you benefit - sounds perfect.
What amazes me is how much of the <50% they have convinced have a chance of being in the top 5%, when there is no way, no how, short of being Tiger Woods.
Really? So a son/daughter in a just-under-middle-class worker can't become rich? That's news to me. I can think of a number of counter-examples.
I challenge anyone mourning the so-called death of the middle class to look at how today's poor people live, and compare it to the way the upper classes lived 100 or even 50 years ago.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. paid off at face value some junior-ranking slices of two collateralized debt obligations at the potential expense of more-senior classes that now are likely to default, according to Fitch Ratings.
Well, for an investment bank turned bank holding company turned financial holding chimera, with associated 'transition periods', there are few rules that actually apply to them.
But, if it makes you feel better, at least they're being supervised by the fed.
[snicker]
Damn, almost with a straight face. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
It's not true. Stock ownership in America is more broadly dispersed now (or last year, at least) than at any time before, mainly due to mutual funds, variable insurance products, IRAs and 401(k)s. The mass stock sell machinery has been very successful. Stop spouting garbage you can't back up.
i may be off 1 percent on the how many own half question...maybe...the the issue of concentration of wealth im correct on that
and you are very wrong about your assertion that wealth has been spread around more and more with 401 ks and middle class woning what ever
wealth is more concentrated now than ever since the great depression
"the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans now have a larger share of total income than they ever have in records going back nearly a century — an even larger amount than during the Roaring Twenties, the last time the US saw such similar disparities in wealth."
ps this is not as authoritative as id like but
"About the richest 1% of Americans who own roughly half of the entire nation’s wealth"
One percent of the U.S. population owns sixty percent of the stock and forty percent of the total wealth. (Hawken, Paul, The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability. New York: HarperBusiness, 1993).
or this
"The top one percent of U.S. households owned 42 percent of all stock in 1997...
The top ten percent of households owned 82 percent of all stock-market wealth...
Only 27 percent of households held more than $10,000 in stock in 1997...
57 percent of Americans didn't own any stock at all...
The top fifth of households saw their income rise 43 percent between 1977 and 1999, while the bottom fifth saw their income fall 9 percent....
Since 1973, every group in society except the top 20 percent has seen its share of the national income decline, with the bottom 20 percent losing the most. They have just 3.6 percent of national income, down from 4.4 percent a quarter century ago.
Indeed, the top fifth now makes more than the rest of the nation combined...
Rebecca Blank, who recently left the President's Council of Economic Advisors, pointed out, ‘We've gone back to levels of income and wealth inequality that this country hasn't seen since the teens and 1920s.’" (Source: Merrill Goozner, Crash of '99?, Salon.com, Oct. 1, 1999).
have i made my point about wealth concentration Rich?
"But the Fed is under fire, fighting now for its life as we know it."
What support is there for this statement? Both the Democrats and Republicans strongly support the Fed.
Political support is fickle. The Fed is synonymous with the economy right now, and the only reason everyone is supportive is because they appear to be showing some success in reinflating the bubble. Another sharp downturn, with the resulting display of impotency from the Fed, and politicians will be climbing all over each other to crucify it.
The Fed is fighting for its life because they accepted the role of economic savior. They've backed themselves into an inescapable corner. And if they can't at least make the economy appear to be healing, they'll be the sacrificial lamb. Not that it'll matter, by that point.
Really? So a son/daughter in a just-under-middle-class worker can't become rich? That's news to me. I can think of a number of counter-examples.
Statistically? Into the top 5%? Short of being a Yale, Harvard or military academy grad, and having the appropriate connections? Sure you have your Jobs, Dell or Gates, but they came from money in the first place. Even jocks who make it big usually get taken to the cleaners on bad investments.
my 1% owns half does appear to be incorrect...the number as of 2002 the latest figures i can find (reliable) some sources say 2% own half and some put it closer to 4
but the assertion that top 10 own almost everything is not far off the mark...remember we are talking assets not income
more on the concentration of wealth in the USA
from an interview of prof e wolff
"Edward Wolff is a professor of economics at New York University. He is the author of Top Heavy: The Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America and What Can Be Done About It, as well as many other books and articles on economic and tax policy. He is managing editor of the Review of Income and Wealth.
MM: How do economists measure levels of equality and inequality?
Wolff: The most common measure used, and the most understandable is: what share of total wealth \ is owned by the richest households, typically the top 1 percent. In the United States, in the last survey year, 1998, the richest 1 percent of households owned 38 percent of all wealth.
This is the most easily understood measure.
There is also another measure called the Gini coefficient. It measures the concentration of wealth at different percentile levels, and does an overall computation. It is an index that goes from zero to one, one being the most unequal. Wealth inequality in the United States has a Gini coefficient of .82, which is pretty close to the maximum level of inequality you can have.
MM: What have been the trends of wealth inequality over the last 25 years?
Wolff: We have had a fairly sharp increase in wealth inequality dating back to 1975 or 1976.
Prior to that, there was a protracted period when wealth inequality fell in this country, going back almost to 1929. So you have this fairly continuous downward trend from 1929, which of course was the peak of the stock market before it crashed, until just about the mid-1970s. Since then, things have really turned around, and the level of wealth inequality today is almost double what it was in the mid-1970s.
Income inequality has also risen. Most people date this rise to the early 1970s, but it hasn't gone up nearly as dramatically as wealth inequality."
YouTube - On the top of Burj Dubai's spire
reasons not to buy the Burj Dubai's penthouse, at any price
1. The view sucks
2. Sand storms will suck even more that high up
LOL. Upward social mobility from lower-middle or even upper-middle class into anything past the top decile can practically be treated as a social lottery. A few anecdotes to the contrary don't make an informal trend much less a statistical argument; it's just cherry-picking winners of the social lottery. That doesn't mean the process is random, of course, just that the odds are pretty incredible and exceptions will always be just that.
Breaking the Dollar...
China's rebound threatens to break the yuan peg to the dollar...
'Thus China's latest momentum means that the pressure to break the yuan-dollar peg is like never before...the nation's(China) massive GDP growth means it can weather some short term pain in its export sector.' China's Massive Rebound Threatens to Break the Yuan Peg
Adding the top percentile groups (90-94.9=12.1%, 95-98.9=25.0%, 99-100=32.7%) in the 2001 data, the top ten percent has 69.8% of total net worth... if I've not misinterpreted the table (which is entirely possible). No idea what part of that net worth is stock/debt/? owned - think some of the other FRB docs that EHP mentioned talk about this.
Mock & Rich,
The top 10% of U.S. wealth holders pay a large portion of the tax bill...with increasing taxes because of increased govt. over-spending, the rich will try and leave the U.S. or stop working, hide their incomes, only invest in tax-protected vehicles, etc.
With a bigger deficit to pay for...there may be tougher laws on emigration, taxation, and eventually capital controls that make it impossible to protect yourself from a massive currency devaluation. (MarketOracle opinion) Don't Fool Yourself: America Is Now a Communist Nation :: The Market Oracle :: Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting Free Website
Not sure what to believe...you think hiding your wealth in gold is THE Answer..some of this 'advice' is to scare people into something but if you don't think there's a scramble to protect assets and wealth(offshore and onshore or under the mattress) and some confusion on just how to do That...then who's the dolt?
There wasn't such a threat to U.S. dollar devaluation in more recent past administrations (democrat or whatever) either...this crisis is bigger than recent crises...that's all.
like a fungus
it just keeps growing and growing
it just keeps growing and growing
Saw a Cialis ad the other night and eldest son can't figure out why having an erection for greater than four hours is a bad thing.
507 / 3 = 169 / 52 = 3.25 years
even I will get bored of BFF by then, and that's an optimistic timeline
homedad43 wrote:
tim geithner wonders the same thing
The mycelium spreads then fruits after acquiring enough food.
volker the viking wrote:
wait a minute.... nice trick.
4:15:15:13
Maybe those K-9 idiots should have just given the dog a Cialis.
ever castrated a bull before?
it's my understanding that priapism is effectively the same but from within
what is a normal weekly bank failure number when we aren't in hard times?
Dylan Ratigan - no more idiotic wars and banking schemes. Let's go to space.
EvilHenryPaulson wrote:
given my comment about timmy, that's too bad.
RockyR wrote:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_pMscxxELHEg/SuL1oTWBfuI/AAAAAAAAGoY/kqL9ei_MgWo/s1600-h/BankFailuresPerYear.jpg via FDIC Bank Failure Update
I wish we had a $ losses to the DIF per week, but the FDIC obfuscates that and it's too early to bother doing the forensic work on it
977? million to DIF this week, EHP.
EHP, I think your estimate of 3.5 years looks pretty optimistic.
Thanks for the link.
Reminds me of the story my dad tells of my grandma getting her Dusenberg gas in the 30s. The attendant asked her to turn off the engine so he could catch up. 3 banks a week in my honest assessment leaves the banking system a little further behind every Monday. The moral hazard created by indicating to the remaining zombie banks that they could have months if not years to further corrupt the financial system.
HomeGnome
those are estimated losses. the FDIC is taking bigger hits than they initially estimate when the individual loans go to auction, and they don't include any losses from the loss sharing agreements as part of announced figure
Love Dylan Ratigan. I stopped watching CNBC when he was forced to leave.
agreed.
Rob Dawg wrote:
I never knew you were descended from the bourgeoisie
Okay - Really confused!
Saw the US 2yr move down to .80
Yet today renewed a 2yr GIC @ 2.14
EHP - especialy since FDIC is moving MBSs and covering the shortfall on the bid...woho!
EvilHenryPaulson wrote:
Now that my secret is out I can tell stories of taking the Packard to the prom and tall tales of fraternity pranks.
Anyone who believes in the upside of the U.S. stock market here should ask (and answer) a simple question:
Where is the committed demand for U.S. stocks going to come from?
By "committed demand," I mean patient buy-and-hold type investors. These investors are the bedrock of any stock market. They enable all the opportunistic trading around the periphery. Let's see where committed demand traditionally has come from, and where these segments are now.
J6P investors have lost their appetite for domestic stocks, as shown by ICI weekly cash flow statistics. We may now be seeing a consistent mutual fund outflow trickle that will grow into a flood.
Participant-directed retirement plans (such as 401ks) are on the downslope.
Hedge funds can (and will) turn their commitment to the short side of the market as easily as to the long side.
Foreign investors can't be very eager buy-and-hold until the dollar shows signs of firming.
Pension funds are not only facing funding crises. They are facing income or cashflow crises as boomers retire, on schedule and early. Pensions can't afford to take a long-term view. They need more liquidity than the stock market offers.
Endowments and foundations don't need to buy the broad stock market and indexes, with all their broken, debt-ridden, downslope companies -- and they especially don't need the R2000 at an infinite P/E ratio. For their committed demand for stocks, they can cherry-pick the best private equity companies and private placement at a forward P/E under 10.
There is no source of committed demand right now. Therefore, the U.S. stock market is more vulnerable now than at just about any other time in recent history.
I wouldn't bet against the S&P 500 too much, mainly because that's where any committed demand that's left will go.
I would bet against the outskirts of the stock market and especially broad indexes selling at ridiculous P/Es for which risk is enormous and committed demand has vanished. Short the Russell 2000 with RWM, or, if you are aggressive, TWM. Right here, right now.
Hillbillies gone wild:
ANDERSON, S.C. -- Authorities say two missing South Carolina boys who sparked school lockdowns have been found.
Multiple media outlets report a 13-year-old boy and his adopted 12-year-old brother were found Thursday in a country club subdivision in Anderson. They were located hours after police reported they were missing and carrying guns and camping supplies they took from their home.
Four public schools and one private school close to the boys' home were placed on lockdown as a precaution during the search.
Anderson County School District 5 spokesman Bill Baker said authorities had no reason to think the boys intended to harm anyone. He said the brothers come from a family of avid hunters.
The boys had recently been disciplined by their parents for bad grades on their report cards.
---South Carolina is the comedy show that keeps on giving.
Rob Dawg
Just looked it up, wow, the Dusenberg was/is some car. I wasn't even kidding on the basis of owning a car in the 30s. My parents didn't even have fridges growing up in the 50s/60s. I'll probably never be as hard workers as they are fwiw.
Beck really hates the
so that's a plus if we get Palin/Beck in 2012!
Dylan has a point...open the bottle or at some point Malthus wins...
Barley wrote:
in what way?
rich - thx for that!
No need to add C, BAC or WFC to the list, right ? I mean, they're all clearly solvent under stress Treasury stress testing, so no need to look at them.
Any one of those basket case operations individually would swamp the asset on the watch list by a mile.
rich wrote:
Baby boomers are still mostly in their peak earning and saving years. Internationally, Chinese income, and income in emerging markets generally, is still growing as a share of total world income. Their savings rates are much higher than ours, and exceeds the investment opportunities in their domestic economies, so a lot of the global increase in savings is coming here.
Not all the money from these two sources will go directly into stocks, but the bond purchases will keep interest rates low and displace other buyers into stocks.
Anybody that hates the Squid cannot be all bad.
Palin/ Beck vs. Pelosi/ Frank
Death Cage Match 2012?
I admittedly self-filter a lot of the financial media, but that was an open and fun piece if nothing else. Who knew there was such a difference between msnbc and cnbc
I beg to differ.
Beck should take a walk in front of a bus.
Yep. Friend's father bought two trashed out in the sixties for something like 200 bucks. Father is gone but he and his brother are finally getting close to restoring one. Auburn body I think.
someone ought to encourage a P: Chris Chelios, VP: Jeremy Roenick independent ticket, not even joking
Actually, we could add that to the electoral process.
A modern day, live, politician "Frogger".
Voting is the slave's suggestion box! It doesn't matter if you choose the welfare-warfare party or the warfare-welfare party. Mad Max is preferable to Big Brother.
What about David Patterson?
Is this the car?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Duesenberg_Convertible_SJ_LA_Grand_Dual-Cowl_Phaeton_1935.jpg
Beck should take a walk in front of a bus
Tire meet Beck. Beck meet tire.
(personal annotation...I might miss Dobbs)
EvilHenryPaulson wrote:
My grandmother was Executive Secretary of the Strathmore Paper Company. Quite a job for a man in those days. Nearly unheard of for a woman.
Jonathan,
Left you another reply in the previous thread. Thanks for sharing.
Re Cialis: Nobody has ever had an erection for four hours. They put that on the commercial 'cause it sounds good.
No worries.... just move to Breckenridge so you can enjoy
without worries 
BRECKENRIDGE JOURNAL; For Marijuana, a Move Into the Open in a Ski Town - NY Times
Might as well enjoy the Rocky Mtn high as America turns into banana republic with due credit to the
I want a menu with more options...
dr munch wrote:
inject cocaine near the right spot and you'll have one for days, was one of the stories in the little "darwin awards" book
EHP - LOL. I shudder to think how long the period of trial and error was until that 'right spot' was found.
HomeGnome wrote:
No I think it's this one.
Duesenberg Restoration
That other car is sure pretty though.
Just to let you guys know, this absent minded philosopher has been known to faint at the sound of the word needle (don't ask....long story I was a sick kid in Germany with scarlet fever and got traumatized by a group of Army doctors who hadn't seen a real case before)....anyway as my face is turning pale...can we please talk about something else besides injections? Pretty please?
Still a sweet ride.
Bearded Spock wrote:
energyecon wrote:
.
MLK Jr was painting an exceptionally rosy portrait of the country, but just sayin' ...
TOT alert
Afghanistan is the biggest locus of what must be the original best cash crop. So, it should have plenty of money. So, why's it so F'd up......
only 3.
Not working hard enough.
Amusing/horrible Dade County anecdote:
The county (or city?) commission no longer has
a quorum due to 3 commisssioners resigning due to
corruption of various kinds--no conspiracy between them.
The county/or city atty sez the governor can appoint a 4th
person so there's a quorum.
The offenses seemed to be very small potatoes and ordinary.
Unlike that lawyer who seems to have spent (with others?) almost
a billion dollars. And he came back here from where he was.
It just can't be about stuff. It's got to be about getting an adrenaline rush.
patientrenter wrote:
Not the ones I know. And I know a lot!
justaskin wrote:
Because there is more profit in instability, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/13/us-trucks-security-taliban
rich wrote:
Let me rephrase it: The average baby boomer will be earning a lot less, and saving a lot less, in the future.
Woweee.
It's an interesting idea. What I've learned about affluent Asians is that they have been very slow to accept stock market risk, especially in foreign stocks. In India, the affluent (including my extended family) actually lean toward their own domestic stocks over foreign stocks, mainly because these are companies they know and understand. I think affluent Asians are even less interested in foreign stocks now than two years ago, and that's a big driver behind the relentless accumulation in gold. Gold is their version of CDs.
patientrenter wrote:
So how is that positive for stocks? The future starts now, right?
I think this is close: http://blog.uncovering.org/archives/uploads/2008/08042903_blog.uncovering.org_duesenberg.jpg
okay, off to bed with me...you can resume your needle talk. Don't know why that set me off tonight, probably just the mental image...but man I don't know how people dope up with shots. I guess they aren't extremely painful for everyone else or I am just a wimp...but shots always feel like someone is ripping a vein out of my arm. My boys are great soldiers though, take it like a man while daddy waits outside so he doesn't pass out. Funny, had no problems being in the delivery room and helping my wife through childbirth twice...well you guys know how to incapacitate me now...just run at me with needles
Night everyone.
rich
I don't think mainlanders can, at least easily, invest outside of China. Capital controls are part of maintaining a currency peg.
Oh, my, how long is that thing?
A car on cialis??
i have enjoyed the times I've been in Canada working, all in Alberta (go figure lol)...also driving my 'summer commute' between the parents' homestead in Alaska and graduate school in Colorado...the one interaction with the health care system in Canada was a dream, as part of a group of students in a vehicle accident near Beaver Creek - I helped the nurse there with the teardowns maintaining the sterile field when she put a few stitches in one of the other students from UAF and she was downright apologetic about charging ~$5 CDN for some antibiotic ointment - that would have been a multi-kilobuck event in a US ER except that there were NO medical facilities the other side of the border...many fond memories of Calgary.
Night Vonbek, been interesting!
EHP,
If you read Douglass' Autobiography of a Slave or others of the genre, I don't think MLK's vision is particularly rosy, given the Dred Scott case and its implications,if you happen to have been born with the wrong skin color. When I started 1st grade, I moved to a grade school in Missouri that had been desegregated a few years earlier, so it wasn't oh so very long ago that the kids I went to school with would have been going to a school considerably less well equipped than the one I attended. And I just turned 50.
So, no, the Great White North sounded pretty darn good for quite a long time in this "free" country of ours, the U.S. of A.
I get a little cynical about the Southern Christian conservatives waxing red in the face about affirmative action, given that they would cheerfully have been selling the chilluns down the river at any sign of deflation or disobedience and a few, like Beck and the druggie Rush, probably would be willing to do it tomorrow, if given the opportunity. So, yeah, Canada can sound pretty darn good.
lawyerliz wrote:
Oh yeah. Like I'm not tired of answering that one.
Rich wrote at 8:08 pm
"Anyone who believes in the upside of the U.S. stock market here should ask (and answer) a simple question:
Where is the committed demand for U.S. stocks going to come from?"
The richest 1 percent of all families in america own more than half of all outstanding stocks, all financial securities, and all business assets. the top 10 percent own almost everything.
the super rich own the banks, the brokerages and the insurance companies
they are at the head of the line when it comes to getting the cheap free money being handed out by the federal reserve
stocks will rise as the dollar is destroyed because that is required by " the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today!" (network, the movie)
am i getting thru to you mr beale.. i mean Rich
Affluent Asians tend to prefer real estate as an investment over stocks.
rich wrote:
Not just yet. The baby boomers are aged 45-64. Since peak saving years are 40-65, that means we've been at peak baby boomer saving for a while, and we will be for another few years. Indians and others don't have to have any direct interest in US stocks to keep demand high. A high demand for assets in one place simply displaces some of that demand to other assets in other places. That's one key reason why low interest rates tend to boost stock prices, even for unleveraged companies.
rich wrote:
Better stocks than cash for foreigners, no?
Only cash is more liquid than most stocks. Bonds are often very illiquid. So where do the pension funds go?
But yeah, based on what has happened to a lot of small stocks over the last couple of years, I can see shorting those indices. better still would selective shorts if you could find an ETF that selected for lousy balance sheets.
rich wrote:
rich, there's a flaw in your scheme. Bernanke et al can keep printing to support MBS and treasuries til doomsday. They are doing great so far. You'd have poor returns this year betting against the Fed. Even if the dollar accelerates in decline, maybe especially, won't stocks keep rising as they have so far? (see any KD post this week for his USD vs SPY)
sm_landlord "Only cash is more liquid than most stocks. Bonds are often very illiquid. So where do the pension funds go?"
Rosie has been covering the huge discrepancy between money market outflows going 10-1 to bonds and hybrids (I think he means balanced funds by this, but someone correct me if I'm wrong on that), rather than stock funds for quite some time. I'd be curious whether these are primarily individual investors, like me, or whether these figures include pension funds. But I haven't seen any analysis of changes in pension fund holding, other than CALPERS and a few other supposedly backing off from hedgie investments. I don't trust that coverage in the WSJ, though, since I haven't seen any hard data on pension holdings.
But I think Rosie's right, that boomers are getting religion on the advisability of bonds and a balanced portfolio. We'll see, given the current rise in the market, whether many will get sucked back in to a stock-heavy portfolio.
Interesting wealth distribution article.
Shunpiking Online Vo.3 No.9 85% of global wealth in hands of 10%
I'll put $50 in the tip jar, right here, right now, if you can produce an authoritative source for this statement.
It's not true. Stock ownership in America is more broadly dispersed now (or last year, at least) than at any time before, mainly due to mutual funds, variable insurance products, IRAs and 401(k)s. The mass stock sell machinery has been very successful. Stop spouting garbage you can't back up.
robj wrote:
I didn't pick up where Rosenberg said the money was going into bonds, I'll have to go back and check.
Most stock are owned by funds, as far as I can tell. And most funds are stock funds that pretty much have to stay invested. So the flow out of stock funds would be the most interesting thing to watch, I think. As I recall, many pension funds have rules about not holding stocks that are priced under $10.00, so it seems that they would have less of an impact on small/penny stocks.
I like Rich's suggestion. I'm trying to figure out a focus and a rationale for what to short.
Maybe Sheila needs to get all those billions actually in hand
before she really unleashes FDIC.
Nitey nite.
Oxtail wrote:
They are in for an ass kicking then.
Only 3-insolvent banks today? Yeah right. And I won the Kentucky Derby on My Dog Spot last week. Past my bedtime.
The fallacy is to believe that the Fed creates commitment in demand to buy stocks. I agree that the Fed has probably produced commitment in demand for MBS, in that they will probably own some of these securities until doomsday.
The Fed has enabled liquidity to buy stocks that huge institutional traders and hedge funds have used to pump up domestic stocks, short-term. But as I've said, there's a difference between having unlimited access to leverage and being willing to take huge margin risk. All fingers are now on the itchy trigger.
I know it's hard for younger people to believe that one fundamental part of the Fed's original mandate was to regulate stock market margin. They did this pretty well, until about 20 years ago, through Regulation T.
Then, the Fed started ignoring Reg T. Then came derivatives and unlimited leverage. Then, in the last few years, has come the era in which the Fed has been the biggest promoter and enabler of stock market leverage. But the Fed is under fire, fighting now for its life as we know it. Promoting stock market leverage can't last very long. It has self-destruction built into the concept.
steelhead wrote:
You really have to read the article. They are counting everyone in the world to get that 10% number. Huge parts of the world population do not participate in markets outside of a 10 mile radius.
Once inflation starts getting out of hand in China, and rates rise, it'll be time to short them. How that will mesh with the huge USD destruction going on over here is anyone's guess.
Wealth distribution in the US: It's bad (well past Pareto optimality 20% / 80%) but not that bad... yet. Let us hope it doesn't get even worse, though perhaps that is part of "God's" (as Lord Blankcheck would define him) plan, too.
rich wrote:
So where does the money go when they exit? If it goes into Ts, what happens to TBT?
Blackhalo wrote:
Affluent Asians tend to prefer real estate as an investment over stocks.
They are in for an ass kicking then.
Maybe, but they're likely to buy and hold until the great great grandchildren pass away.
rich wrote:
"Moreover, the top 1 percent of households accounted for 42 percent of the value of all stock owned in the United States; the top 5 percent accounted for about two-thirds; the top 10 percent for more than three-quarters; and the top 20 percent for almost 90 percent."
The Rich Get Richer: | The American Prospect
The Filipinos and Filapinas around here love the property idea. In 2005 a gal I worked with moved to Murietta (Inland Empire, node of disaster) and kept their mortgaged house in L.A. to rent. The house in Long Beach is only down about 25%, Murietta likely 50%.
ResistanceIsFeudal wrote:
If you look at FRB: 2007 SCF most of that balance is based on household equity. the 2010 SCF should be brutal
Blackhalo wrote:
With the agenda displayed in the last section of that piece, I would have to see the raw data before I would believe the assertions.
Blackhalo
I don't know how they compiled those numbers, but near half of US equity share ownership is foreign owned. You can back out how much ownership each quintile had in the 2007 SCF FRB: 2007 SCF
The top x% are going to own a lot, but those numbers must be for the world and not just the US
sm_landlord wrote:
Agreed. But I have seen these numbers, or ones close to them, for quite some time now, from multiple sources. I just picked the first one that popped up in Google. My understanding is that they have gotten even more extreme over the past 5 years.
Yeah, as long as they're not overly leveraged it won't be the massacre it is over here.
One of the most popular terms on irvinehousingblog is FCB, Foreign Cash Buyer. Asians or dual nationals who snap up houses in SoCal with cash offers. They'll lose money when prices fall again, but at least they won't go underwater.
Mutual funds are basically a U.S. invention, since 1924. They've never taken off much in other parts of the world.
There have been so many attempts to get Japanese to buy funds, and virtually all have failed. In Europe, probably not more than 1 person in 10 owns equities through funds.
In between stock funds, the stock portion of hybrid funds (mainly balanced and asset allocation funds), and variable insurance products, there's maybe $5.5 trillion in U.S. stock funds. Probably less than 25% of total global stock market capitalization is in different types of managed or indexed equity funds aimed for individuals.
But this 25% is huge for stock market momentum. The financial establishment persuaded ordinary people not only to have faith in the market but to keep putting their new retirement plan contributions in the market and their reinvested dividends, and to "buy-and-hold" long-term. That base of committed capital, cashflow and acceptance has enabled a lot of other money, such as hedge funds, to flourish. Now, that base has begun eroding seriously. It took 50 years to build, and the outflow won't be stopped in a few years. It's secular.
EvilHenryPaulson wrote:
If they are referencing the study that I am familiar with, it only looks at US ownership. Clearly Hu and Abdul will skew the numbers.
On similar lines, I believe that the top 10% have 40% or so of consumer discretionary spending.
This may account for some of the resilience in consumer spending, whereas income taxes collected, which fall fairly heavily on the middle-class, have been decimated.
Of course, the very poor, who don't have much money at the best of times, are less affected by the recession.
Not true. Not by a long shot. More spouted statistics.
Turns out tonight is MSU night -- make shiite up, that is.
also relevant to those interested in asset ownership surveys. From March
The 2009 MetLife Study of the American Dream via The 2009 MetLife Study of the American Dream
Special thanks from my Mom in Naples, FL. Her condo association had in account with Orion. When Orion appeared on Problem Bank List back in August I told her (she's on the Condo's Board) and they made sure they didn't have more than $250K. So when they failed today they didn't have any unnecessary anxiety.
Some may go into bonds temporarily. I'm looking for opportunities to load up on TBT lower than now.
A lot will go into cash. A lot will go into hard assets, such as gold and real estate. A lot will just disappear, meaning that it will either be wiped out or go into hiding. The government wants people to own stocks, bonds and other types of assets with reporting mechanisms. They don't want people to own money that isn't reported.
BH,that Grayson bit on ACORN was tremendous.
"Will the Congressman yield?"
"No."
rich (profile) wrote on Fri, 11/13/2009 - 8:58 pm
(quoting mock turtle) The richest 1 percent of all families in america own more than half of all outstanding stocks, all financial securities, and all business assets. the top 10 percent own almost everything. "
Rich said
I'll put $50 in the tip jar, right here, right now, if you can produce an authoritative source for this statement.
i know you want a mainstream source
right now i can document the top 2% own half of the world and the latest figurees for the USA based on household surveys and irs figure indicate as of 1998 the top 2% owned more than half
i believe i read from a reliable source that wealth had concentrated even more in the last 8 years
so im looking for the best source i can find
but the information document with footnotes at wikipedia shows that the wealthiest 2% woned more than half by the turn of the mellinium
ill keep looking and recant the 1% number and change to 2% or ill stand fast...checking
Distribution of wealth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
this article indicates top 1% own 33% of all wealth but their definition appears to be different than what i quoted which was half of all stocks bonds and business assets...
so again...im closing in on it
right now i may be off by 1 percent..ie 2% own half of everything of investment value in the usa...but we will see
New Economist: Wealth inequality in the United States
but i stick with my observation that the super wealth are at the head of the food chain and they are far and away the majority owners of america and will use the bernanke printing press to keep their assets at a notional value that compensates for the falling dollar
EHP - Thus the importance, from a demographic standpoint, of programs to keep people in their homes, and attempts to prop up this asset class, I guess. Unfortunate for all that it's built on an extremely fragile house of cards - the numbers looked so nice
1 currency now -yogi wrote:
Yeah I could not stop laughing. He does it again on the floor reading off the dead in each (R) district that is brutal as well but gets cut off somehow.
YouTube - Part Three: Republicans Attempt to Cut Off Rep. Alan Grayson's Speech
Interesting article from naked capitalism:
Goldman Gives Preferential Treatment to Junior CDO Holders Over Senior « naked capitalism
rich wrote:
No need to get hostile, it was an honest mistake and there's plenty of fog for me to hide behind what with domestically managed but foreign owned assets or contingent claims from swaps if I were hostile myself. I was wrong, but would have been accurate if I had said claims on fixed income (I say claims to include all CDOs)
Here's a relevant report prepared for Congress last January, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL34319.pdf
the best it does is track official fund flows in reference to the aforementioned fog
mock turtle wrote:
What amazes me is how much of the <50% they have convinced have a chance of being in the top 5%, when there is no way, no how, short of being Tiger Woods.
My plan is to be the next "Oprah".
sdtfs wrote:
My preference would be to be the next Hefner...
EvilHenryPaulson wrote:
We've all discussed the space option on more than one occasion in the CR threads. Maybe Ratigan or his writers lurk here once in a while?
mock turtle wrote:
the super wealth are at the head of the food chain and they are far and away the majority owners of america and will use the bernanke printing press to keep their assets at a notional value that compensates for the falling dollar
Why would they not just hold cash and let it appreciate through asset deflation? Poor folk, by definition, don't hold large amounts of cash, nor do the middle or upper-middle class. Bills to pay and stuff to buy. They do, however, have homes and cars, as well as stocks. The richer you are, the more you benefit - sounds perfect.
Really? So a son/daughter in a just-under-middle-class worker can't become rich? That's news to me. I can think of a number of counter-examples.
I challenge anyone mourning the so-called death of the middle class to look at how today's poor people live, and compare it to the way the upper classes lived 100 or even 50 years ago.
energyecon wrote:
Well, for an investment bank turned bank holding company turned financial holding chimera, with associated 'transition periods', there are few rules that actually apply to them.
But, if it makes you feel better, at least they're being supervised by the fed.
[snicker]
Damn, almost with a straight face. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
I agree, Rich.
FAZ. Right here, right now:
video.
Absolutely screaming buy. Look at the vol on the bloomie ticker. Toe in, toe out... C"MON!
C
"But the Fed is under fire, fighting now for its life as we know it."
What support is there for this statement? Both the Democrats and Republicans strongly support the Fed.
Rich said
rich said at 8:58 pm
It's not true. Stock ownership in America is more broadly dispersed now (or last year, at least) than at any time before, mainly due to mutual funds, variable insurance products, IRAs and 401(k)s. The mass stock sell machinery has been very successful. Stop spouting garbage you can't back up.
i may be off 1 percent on the how many own half question...maybe...the the issue of concentration of wealth im correct on that
and you are very wrong about your assertion that wealth has been spread around more and more with 401 ks and middle class woning what ever
wealth is more concentrated now than ever since the great depression
read it and weep
by the way, stop spewin garbage yourself!
Raw Story » Concentration of wealth in hands of rich greatest on record
"the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans now have a larger share of total income than they ever have in records going back nearly a century — an even larger amount than during the Roaring Twenties, the last time the US saw such similar disparities in wealth."
ps this is not as authoritative as id like but
"About the richest 1% of Americans who own roughly half of the entire nation’s wealth"
About the richest 1% of Americans who own roughly half of the entire nation’s wealth | Midas Oracle .ORG
or this
One percent of the U.S. population owns sixty percent of the stock and forty percent of the total wealth. (Hawken, Paul, The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability. New York: HarperBusiness, 1993).
or this
"The top one percent of U.S. households owned 42 percent of all stock in 1997...
The top ten percent of households owned 82 percent of all stock-market wealth...
Only 27 percent of households held more than $10,000 in stock in 1997...
57 percent of Americans didn't own any stock at all...
The top fifth of households saw their income rise 43 percent between 1977 and 1999, while the bottom fifth saw their income fall 9 percent....
Since 1973, every group in society except the top 20 percent has seen its share of the national income decline, with the bottom 20 percent losing the most. They have just 3.6 percent of national income, down from 4.4 percent a quarter century ago.
Indeed, the top fifth now makes more than the rest of the nation combined...
Rebecca Blank, who recently left the President's Council of Economic Advisors, pointed out, ‘We've gone back to levels of income and wealth inequality that this country hasn't seen since the teens and 1920s.’" (Source: Merrill Goozner, Crash of '99?, Salon.com, Oct. 1, 1999).
have i made my point about wealth concentration Rich?
PastTense wrote:
Political support is fickle. The Fed is synonymous with the economy right now, and the only reason everyone is supportive is because they appear to be showing some success in reinflating the bubble. Another sharp downturn, with the resulting display of impotency from the Fed, and politicians will be climbing all over each other to crucify it.
The Fed is fighting for its life because they accepted the role of economic savior. They've backed themselves into an inescapable corner. And if they can't at least make the economy appear to be healing, they'll be the sacrificial lamb. Not that it'll matter, by that point.
Dead Shtick wrote:
Statistically? Into the top 5%? Short of being a Yale, Harvard or military academy grad, and having the appropriate connections? Sure you have your Jobs, Dell or Gates, but they came from money in the first place. Even jocks who make it big usually get taken to the cleaners on bad investments.
Rich
my 1% owns half does appear to be incorrect...the number as of 2002 the latest figures i can find (reliable) some sources say 2% own half and some put it closer to 4
but the assertion that top 10 own almost everything is not far off the mark...remember we are talking assets not income
more on the concentration of wealth in the USA
from an interview of prof e wolff
"Edward Wolff is a professor of economics at New York University. He is the author of Top Heavy: The Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America and What Can Be Done About It, as well as many other books and articles on economic and tax policy. He is managing editor of the Review of Income and Wealth.
MM: How do economists measure levels of equality and inequality?
Wolff: The most common measure used, and the most understandable is: what share of total wealth \ is owned by the richest households, typically the top 1 percent. In the United States, in the last survey year, 1998, the richest 1 percent of households owned 38 percent of all wealth.
This is the most easily understood measure.
There is also another measure called the Gini coefficient. It measures the concentration of wealth at different percentile levels, and does an overall computation. It is an index that goes from zero to one, one being the most unequal. Wealth inequality in the United States has a Gini coefficient of .82, which is pretty close to the maximum level of inequality you can have.
MM: What have been the trends of wealth inequality over the last 25 years?
Wolff: We have had a fairly sharp increase in wealth inequality dating back to 1975 or 1976.
Prior to that, there was a protracted period when wealth inequality fell in this country, going back almost to 1929. So you have this fairly continuous downward trend from 1929, which of course was the peak of the stock market before it crashed, until just about the mid-1970s. Since then, things have really turned around, and the level of wealth inequality today is almost double what it was in the mid-1970s.
Income inequality has also risen. Most people date this rise to the early 1970s, but it hasn't gone up nearly as dramatically as wealth inequality."
The Wealth Divide The Growing Gap in the United States Between the Rich and the Rest
YouTube - On the top of Burj Dubai's spire
reasons not to buy the Burj Dubai's penthouse, at any price
1. The view sucks
2. Sand storms will suck even more that high up
LOL. Upward social mobility from lower-middle or even upper-middle class into anything past the top decile can practically be treated as a social lottery. A few anecdotes to the contrary don't make an informal trend much less a statistical argument; it's just cherry-picking winners of the social lottery. That doesn't mean the process is random, of course, just that the odds are pretty incredible and exceptions will always be just that.
As for foreign ownership the brits and dutch own quite a bit of america, way more than the Japanese or China.
Breaking the Dollar...
China's rebound threatens to break the yuan peg to the dollar...
'Thus China's latest momentum means that the pressure to break the yuan-dollar peg is like never before...the nation's(China) massive GDP growth means it can weather some short term pain in its export sector.'
China's Massive Rebound Threatens to Break the Yuan Peg
EvilHenryPaulson wrote:
There, added a couple.
That trend from 1929 jibes with the numbers I read from the US Treasury Dept. recently.
Regarding wealth distribution, etc... table 5 from this FRB paper shows net worth breakdown by percentile groups:
A Rolling Tide: Changes in the Distribution of Wealth in the U.S., 1989-2001
Adding the top percentile groups (90-94.9=12.1%, 95-98.9=25.0%, 99-100=32.7%) in the 2001 data, the top ten percent has 69.8% of total net worth... if I've not misinterpreted the table (which is entirely possible). No idea what part of that net worth is stock/debt/? owned - think some of the other FRB docs that EHP mentioned talk about this.
Mock & Rich,
The top 10% of U.S. wealth holders pay a large portion of the tax bill...with increasing taxes because of increased govt. over-spending, the rich will try and leave the U.S. or stop working, hide their incomes, only invest in tax-protected vehicles, etc.
With a bigger deficit to pay for...there may be tougher laws on emigration, taxation, and eventually capital controls that make it impossible to protect yourself from a massive currency devaluation. (MarketOracle opinion)
Don't Fool Yourself: America Is Now a Communist Nation :: The Market Oracle :: Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting Free Website
Just like they did under the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Carter administrations.
Don't fool yourself; if you believe that tripe you're a dolt.
Not sure what to believe...you think hiding your wealth in gold is THE Answer..some of this 'advice' is to scare people into something but if you don't think there's a scramble to protect assets and wealth(offshore and onshore or under the mattress) and some confusion on just how to do That...then who's the dolt?
There wasn't such a threat to U.S. dollar devaluation in more recent past administrations (democrat or whatever) either...this crisis is bigger than recent crises...that's all.
merchants of fear wrote:
Only if you exclude the regressive taxes.