We Quitely Slip Into a Depressian

Ignored by mainstream media, Income declined in in the U.S. in 2009.

California's personal income dropped for the first time since the Great Depression.

blogs.wsj.com...

Overall U.S. per capita income dropped 2.6% to about $31,000. Connecticut, home to many of the titans of finance, continued to be the state with the highest per capita income in the nation at $54,000, but it was in the top 10 in terms of declines from 2008 with a 3.3% drop. Wyoming had the largest personal income drop in the country at 5.9%. Only four states posted gains in per capita personal income with West Virginia coming out on top with a 1.8% increase, though it has seventh lowest level in the nation.

www.sfgate.com.../c/a/2010/03/25/MNQC1CLAG0.DTL

Personal income in California fell last year for the first time since the Great Depression, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

State income plunged even more sharply in 2009 than the similar, historic drop that occurred on a national basis, a notable reversal given that California generally has beaten the national averages throughout the 80-year history of this report.

Nationwide, the measure dropped one additional time in 1949, when average U.S. personal income declined 1.3 percent. But incomes in California grew through that post-World War II slump with an increase of 1.7 percent that year.

www2.journalnow.com...

Personal income in North Carolina dropped from $326 million in 2008 to $323 million in 2009, a 0.8 percent decline. Nationally, personal income dropped 1.7 percent, from about $12.23 billion in 2008 to about $12.02 billion in 2009.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis said that per-capita personal income in North Carolina peaked at $35,249 in 2008, then dropped 2.3 percent in 2009 to $34,453. The decline was less than the drop of more than 3 percent in such states as Florida, California and Georgia, not to mention the drops of almost 6 percent in Nevada and Wyoming.

Walden cautioned that because personal income includes unemployment compensation and other forms of help, North Carolina's decline may be more severe than the numbers indicate. And while the state's income didn't decline as much as in some other areas, times are still challenging, Walden said.

While the San Francisco Chronicle put out a story about this on the front page, and the WSJ covered this in a blog, I think the Winston-Salem Journal wrote the best article.

All last year, the big media outlets kept talking about the recovery. I don't think they succeeded in fooling too many people. When income declines, demand declines. When demand drops, prices have no where to go but down.

If unemployment is still high, that means incomes are still dropping. What isn't being pointed out that most declines in the unemployed are generally due to people running out of unemployment, and their extensions.

How in the heck is the stock market over 10 grand?

I have been pondering this question for some time now
and since this thread is about financial income
I thought it relevant

What happened to all the money???
Everybody is going broke,
this money didn't just evaporate
it had to go somewhere that it doesn't
get recirculated. Where did it all go???
trillions and trillions

In my opinion it has been diverted to the world governments digging in for whatever reason they have. The sheer underground base and other facility construction has been running at breakneck speed, especially in the last 10 years. There are several thoughts as to why they would be doing this now and stocking these facilities with food, medicine, etc. We just don't have an answer as of yet, but the building of seed banks, storing libraries book in salt mines, CIA moving to Colorado, a library being built near Salt Lake city that has super computers where they are uploading all the information they can from around the world. Something has the governments spooked. Being that we had a cold war threatening the destruction of the entire biosphere and they weren't building like they are now raises the question again, what are they afraid of at this time? We know the Pentagon has lost trillions and no one knows where it went. It was bad enough for them to be buying $850 hammers, but to just lose trillions with no explanation? BS! The whole world was buzzing along with strong economies and then boom, everything crashed. And as you say, where did the money go? It would be the biggest case for a criminal investigation world wide if anyone else lost trillions and said they don't know what happened. But the governments, and military industrial complex has done just that, well along with the usual suspects running the central banks. It is ridiculous beyond all belief and I don't know why the people are not up in arms demanding to know...where did the money go!?

I think the big point is, that sure, they finally got their big health insurance bill passed, but what it is going to do is another thing.

This story should be big news.

If we can loan out a a trillion and a half to bail out Wallstreet Fat Cats, the fed government sure oughta be able to lend out a Trillion and a Half to Mainstreet working Joes so they can go back to school, or start their own businesses.

That would be a better plan in my opinion for jump starting our economy.

I remember late 2008, talking to a friend. He said not to worry about it, MSM had reassured him that this would be over within 6 months. I laughed my ass off. I've been calling it a depression for over a year. People who aren't yet seriously effected will continue to tout this recovery bs until the next leg falls, either the commercial real estate or a massively declining dollar. Then the jig is up. We'll all begin to realize that we're plain screwed.

I was taught in college that the definition of a depression boils down to one factor and one factor only. GDP growth. Macro and Micro Economics courses.

Now, last year the first 3 quarters were declining, then magically a rise in GCP.

I did a little search for this earlier. I would have to dig up an old thread, but by memory the last numbers not manipulated by the media, there was about a 4% increase in GDP.

Now think about it, Cash for Clunkers, the New House $8000 stimulus, the Home Renovation stimulus.

If you took all of that money and dumped it into that 4th quarter numbers, what would you get? My calculation was about a 10% boost to the GDP.

All of that means is we ACTUALLY had about a 3-6% decrease in GDP.

They created a bubble in the GDP, I am REALLY interested in the numbers for this years first quarter.

Because of the bubble(false numbers) created by those stimulus actions, we may see a decline in GDP as high as 10%

THEN people will know this is not improving.



[edit on 3/26/2010 by endisnighe]

One thing that not many are aware of is that China was behind the Cash for Clunkers scheme. They would not purchase any bonds unless the US sent a large amount of metals to China. The Chinese Embassy came up with the idea and pitched it to the DC insiders and viola Cash for Clunkers. Now I am a Real Estate Agent in Florida now. I work for a builder and we have been selling quite a few homes since last quarter. I suspect it is the tax credit that is driving people that were waiting on the fence to take advantage of the low prices, low intrest, and the $8,000 tax credit. However, the derivitaves market is the big black cloud that could wipe out the global economy. I watched a documentary where the total derivitaves market is like 360x Global Domestic Production. The bankers and the like have gambled on derivitaves like it was a casino and if that bubble bursts, there is nothing anyone can do about it. I think of it like a big reset button. The only thing that they could do is to start over basically because there is no way to rectify that market.

Originally posted by boondock-saint
I have been pondering this question for some time now
and since this thread is about financial income
I thought it relevant

What happened to all the money???
Everybody is going broke,
this money didn't just evaporate
it had to go somewhere that it doesn't
get recirculated. Where did it all go???
trillions and trillions

Almost all the money in the system isn't real money at all. It's CREDIT. Banks are only required to keep about 3% (actually less -- there are ways around even this rule) of their outstanding loans in "real" money. That means for every 3 dollars or so in actual money, there 97 dollars that are simply "promises to pay" at a later date. These promises can and do get passed around like "real" money, but they are simply future promises, and can evaporate at any time.

Its a bit like a giant game of musical chairs. Imagine there are 3 chairs and 100 people playing. As long as times are good and the music plays on, everybody thinks, "well, there are empty chairs so I could get one if I really wanted." Everyone feels secure, and they don't actually have to sit in the chairs...everyone feels like they have the potential to sit down any time they wanted (i.e., the promise to pay -- credit -- "come on man, you know I'm good for it, put it on the tab"). But once the music stops playing, only three people get to sit down and the other 97 are left without chairs. "Where did all the chairs go? How could 97 chairs vanish so quickly?" The reality is that those 97 chairs never existed in the first place...they werte simply "potential chairs," just like 97% of the money in the system is credit, or the promise to pay.

The people I know who were laid off, and managed to finally find a job all took substantial pay cuts. If that trend continues, it will only lead to more layoffs in order to hire new people in at lower wages and salaries.

The Dollar won't drop, it will actually go up in value, because the low demand means a drop in prices. Investments however, start turning into losses, as no one is making money, because no one can afford to buy anything. The house of cards collapses, large fortunes disappear.

A massive re-distribution of wealth and income will be made to happen through the natural forces of the market before the economy can recover. At the end of the Great Depression, it took WW II, and the need to mass produce weapons and the government taking on deficits higher than GDP i order to bring us out of the depression.

This also included high taxes on the rich, strong policies to restrict immigration, and the development of strong unions.

This time around I would prefer to see a large increase in small businesses, as in small automated manufacturing companies.

Unemployment recovery is a serious serious issue right now. There are alot of highly qualified people out there whom had 10yr+ careers that suddenly took huge drops in their income. Alot of thes folks were middle class with houses, cars and the like. You can't survive on UN benefits when you have those kind of responsibilities.

A big issue with the recover is that many of these people are having to go outside of their field to find work. But employers outside do not want victims of the economy whom are going outside of their field and applying for openings trying to cross use skills. I talked to several employers that told me that if they hire these people on they will jump ship soon as a job reopens in their field. That they demand higher pay for a job they are overqualified for.

This really ticked me off to hear this....cause right now i just want a job so that i can save my friggin house, and everything else i worked for over 10 years. What does society want us to do?......Should us victims of the economy just be put in a dog shelter somewhere that nobody wants us???? We can't go back to our industry cause it crashed out and nobody is hiring......we can't go outside the industry cause no body wants to take the chance on us.

Sorry for the rant......its been 9 months and i have had only a handful of leads......its very frustrating and shameful to me cause ive always been such a hard worker with a college education and now to sit here and feel absolutely worthless trying every avenue i can....It sucks man!

I shouldn't be surprised, but I am.

This should be getting considerable media coverage, but it is being buried. If there was ever any evidence that our major new media is being controlled by the rich and the powerful, it is that this critical piece of news is being ignored.

This is like the fifth chamber on the Titanic being breached. With a mechanical mathematical certainty, our economic ship is sinking.

Arrogance has sank our economy.

We will have to build a new one.

Hopefully the foolishness of Free Market fascism is remembered.