Tuesday, December 25, 2012

What's capitalism?

Under capitalism you can have either expansion or a recession. Welfare benefits and workers’ wages are being sacrificed to restore capitalism's growth.

Four dollars worth of food a day is what food stamp recipients get through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). To pay for rent and utilities, a family of three gets $400 per month from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which comes to another four dollars a day per person.

 American corporations' profits as a share of GDP is at an all-time high while wages and salaries are at all-time lows. Workers receive one cent for every $3 the richest 130,000 Americans make.

In America the richest 1% received over one-third of the total gain in marketable wealth over the period from 1983 to 2007. The next 4% also received about a third of the total gain and the next 15% about a fifth, so that the top 20% collectively accounted for 89%  of the total growth in wealth, while the bottom 80 percent accounted for 11 percent. The bottom 90% of households responsible for 73% of total indebtedness.

The 10 richest Americans made more than the entire US national housing budget in just one year. That's over $50 billion. The 20 richest Americans made more than the entire American education budget.


From the Wall Street Journal:
"The Federal Reserve’s intensified campaign to push mortgage rates lower has hit a wall, in part because a shift in the lending landscape has made some banks unable, or unwilling, to pass along cheaper credit... While current rates are the lowest in generations, some economists argue that they should be even lower—perhaps 2.8% based on the historical relationship between mortgage rates and yields on mortgage-backed securities. The economists posit that banks are keeping the rates artificially high, boosting profits and depriving the economy of the full benefit of the Federal Reserve’s efforts...Commercial banks reported a record $9.4 billion in income from mortgage-banking during the third quarter of 2012, according to an analysis of data by Inside Mortgage Finance, which says it is the highest since it began tracking such data in 2002. The third-quarter figure was up 18.7% from the second quarter and 72.3% from one year ago, and it was more than what the industry earned in 2007 and 2008 combined.

That's capitalism

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