Why There Has Been No Recovery In One Simple Chart - A Harvest of Corruption

"The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy."

Will Rogers, Nov 26, 1932

“Trickle-down theory - the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

"It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global financial sector has become criminalised, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud."

Charles H. Ferguson

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Upton Sinclair

"In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods.  They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits.  They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

"What we have are asset PRICES being whipped up as median real wages deflate."

Anthony Sanders, Whip It! Real Median Wages Down 3.4% Since Q1 2010

"The problem of the last three decades is not the 'vicissitudes of the marketplace,' but rather deliberate actions by the government to redistribute income from the rest of us to the one percent.   This pattern of government action shows up in all areas of government policy."

Dean Baker

If the people have no money, they may buy no goods, even essentials, without falling ever more deeply into debt.

That is not so difficult to understand.  Unless your paycheck demands that you not only cannot understand it,  but not even see it, or talk publicly about it. 

And so we have this sad spectacle of Our Great Reformer desperately trying to ram two trade deals through the Congress, without a real examination and debate, in the waning days of his office. 

And we see the continuing attempts by the Congress itself to thwart and undo financial reform under cover of rhetoric and canards, so that they too might get paid by the moneyed interests.

The harlots of finance and economics will say, 'You laymen simply do not understand the mysteries of our science.  Wages always lag in a recovery.'

Seven years is some lag.   Unfortunately economics these days has less in common with a natural science than it has with marketing.   And at its worst, it has become a carney sideshow.

But we might feel better about all this uncertainty if the corruption and distortion that have become embedded in our laws and economic theories, that preceded this and led to a long term secular stagnation in median incomes, had been changed in any meaningful way since the financial crisis. 

And they have not.    But yet we marvel that our condition seems intractable, unsolvable.

This is the root of our problem.  It is old as Babylon, and evil as sin.  If we sow greed to the worst of our desires, we will reap a harvest of corruption.

US Middle Class Wealth Has Collapsed, Consumed by the Gods of Finance

"As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.

They kill us for their sport."

William Shakespeare, King Lear

“Reality denied comes back to haunt.”

Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Let's file this under 'why aren't people buying things and saving more?'

Yes I know that wealth is not income. That is a small consolation when you don't have much of either.

The Recovery™ is like Equal Justice™ these days of the Pax Americana and Pax Brittanica.

It is reserved for some, and keeps two sets of books.

Median Household Net Worth is back to what it was in the 1960's.

At least we had better music then.

So who are you going to vote for this time?  Bush, or Clinton?

And may the odds be ever in your favour.

The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustainable recovery.

Can You Help the Fed Figure Out What Is Wrong With The Recovery™

Why doesn't the public spend and save more?

"We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country's interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address

US Healthcare Costs a Global Outlier and Monument to Crony Capitalism

I think the Big Pharma/Health and Big Finance sectors have similar cartel like structures where a few large companies dominate the field, exercising considering political power and the ability to obtain subsidies and protections from the system while fending off regulation and price restraints.

There are others of course, like the energy field from exploration to distribution, often known as Big Oil, but which now includes natural gas and electric energy production and distribution.

The recurring myths of the efficient market and 'free trade' are exacting a heavy toll on the general public and the real economy.  They provide ideological cover to a favored elite that is acting in the manner of a privileged and extractive aristocracy while beguiling many with the allure of easy money.

The concentration of ownership in the media has become an inhibiting and directing influence in public discourse that is hard to miss.

The current recovery fueled corporate perks and ZIRP for the financial sector, a fine example of 'trickle down' economics, will be remembered as one of the great policy errors of modern economic history. They pretend ignorance, they feign helplessness, and they know.  But they are getting paid not to act effectively, and even not to see, but to spin some fantasy.

They 'feel your pain.'  They just do not do anything substantial about it.  Even a second term president can still talk as though he is a recently arrived outsider, critiquing the actions of some predecessor and a corrupt system in which is he barely involved.

These are not leaders.  They are like modern CEO's, professional organizers and managers, who talk a great game about their accomplishments but, when the truth comes out, posture that they stand outside the very system for which they have long held the ultimate responsibility.  

But even worse are those who make little pretense to justice and goodness and moral principle, preferring to appeal to the darkest impulses, the fears and hatreds of a society.  Their actions betray their words.

The lack of serious reform, in large part because of the partnership between Big Money and Washington's new political class, and the dormancy of the progressive impulse, will eventually stress the fabric of society to the limit.  And then change will come.

Read the entire story here.