Let's open it first:
"The typical US household saw its net worth actually decline 1.2 percent from 2010 to 2013....
Incomes for the highest-earning 1 percent of Americans soared 31 percent from 2009 through 2012....
And after
30 years of skyrocketing income inequality, the top 1 percent now
control a bigger share of wealth than they have since FDR, [and] not
only are the rich getting richer — they’re getting taxed less, too."
Now for the $alt:
"In 2014, top 400 billionaires added $92b to their wealth; Biggest gainer is Alibaba founder" by Peter Newcomb and Alex Sazonov, Bloomberg News December 30, 2014
NEW YORK — The richest people on Earth got richer in 2014, adding $92 billion to their collective fortune. The net worth of the world’s top 400 billionaires on Monday stood at $4.1 trillion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking.
The biggest gainer: Jack Ma, cofounder of Alibaba Group, China’s biggest e-commerce company. Ma, a former English teacher, added $25.1 billion to his fortune, riding a 56 percent surge in the company’s shares since its September initial public offering. Ma, 50, briefly passed Li Ka-shing as Asia’s richest person.
Well, yahoo!
Two of the other biggest gainers were Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg. Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., added $13.7 billion to his net worth after the company’s stock rose 28 percent as dozens of businesses the 84-year-old chairman bought over the past five decades churned out record profits.
Buffett passed Mexican telecom billionaire Carlos Slim on Dec. 5 to become the world’s second-richest person.
See: A $lim Middle Class in Latin America
Bill Gates, 59, cofounder of Microsoft Corp., was up $9.1 billion during the year. He remains the richest person, with $87.6 billion. Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, gained $10.6 billion as the California business rose to a record Dec. 22. This year, Facebook made headway in mobile advertising. Its acquisition of Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion has also been paying off.
Nobody was hit harder than Vladimir Evtushenkov, 66. Once Russia’s 14th-richest person, he lost 80 percent of his wealth, dropping out of the Bloomberg ranking. He was sentenced to house arrest in September in a money-laundering case. The court also ruled in favor of nationalizing his stake in Bashneft, which he controlled through AFK Sistema. His fortune fell $8.1 billion.
Leonid Mikhelson, 59, is also one of the biggest losers in dollar terms among Russia’s 20 richest, down $7.8 billion. He is the chief executive of OAO Novatek, a natural gas producer that fell 44 percent during the year. He has a $10.1 billion fortune.
Viktor Vekselberg surpassed Alisher Usmanov as Russia’s richest person after Usmanov’s MegaFon OAO lost almost half its value since June. Vekselberg is worth $14.1 billion; Usmanov fell 32 percent to $13.8 billion.
One of only a few Russians among the 400 richest who gained in 2014 was aluminum billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who added $1.6 billion as his Hong Kong company rose 122 percent. He has increased his fortune to $8.2 billion.
Sheldon Adelson, who controls Las Vegas Sands Corp., fell $8.7 billion as the Las Vegas casino company fell 25 percent.
Jeffrey Bezos, 50, chairman of Amazon.com, had $7.2 billion trimmed from his fortune as the Seattle company lost ground in cloud computing. Bezos is ranked 21st, with a $28.7 billion fortune.
Bezos also owns the Washington Post.
Elon Musk added $2.9 billion, mostly the result of a 50 percent gain by Tesla Motors.
China’s 10 richest people have added almost $48 billion combined, year-to-date.
The title of Asia’s richest person could be challenged by Wang Jianlin, whose Dalian Wanda Group staged an IPO of its commercial properties unit this month. An IPO for Wanda Cinema Line Co. is planned for 2015. Wang has a net worth of $25.3 billion, gaining $12.8 billion during the year.
Bloomberg News found 86 new or hidden billionaires who had never been on an international ranking. Among them were the six heirs to a $13 billion Monaco fortune, unveiled after the family’s matriarch, Helene Pastor, was gunned down in France. The fortune spans two branches of the Pastor family, which built much of Monaco’s skyline.
A surge in real estate and corporate valuations has elevated the fortunes of at least five Blackstone Group billionaires.
Cofounder and chairman Stephen Schwarzman added $926 million.
--more--"
How are you doing, readers?
"After years in a bull market, will 2015 keep momentum?" by Beth Healy, Globe Staff January 01, 2015
The Dow buzzed past 18,000 briefly last week. The economy boomed all summer and is expected to keep humming into the new year. And a trip to the gas station hurts your wallet less than it has in years.
For consumers and investors, these are suddenly glory days. That might be hard to grasp, after the long, slow climb out of the Great Recession. But today, American companies are earning record profits, inflation is low, and more people are landing jobs.
Yeah, everything is great! That's the narrative from the 1%'s mouthpiece.
“I would like this business cycle to last a long time,” said James Swanson, chief investment strategist at MFS Investment Management. “The environment you’re looking at is one of the best in memory.”
For certain cho$en intere$ts.
The catch for investors, of course, is that it’s hard to keep up that kind of pace, and market strategists are predicting more modest stock gains in 2015, in the mid-single digits. They see lots of positive economic signs to bolster that view, tempered by a few warning clouds.
This is starting to sting.
The leading cause for optimism is the precipitous drop in oil prices, from $101 a barrel to just $55. Those prices were driven lower thanks to ample supply, not a drop in demand that would have hinted at a slower economy.
Related: OPEC Meeting
What do you mean it might not be that good a thing after all?
For consumers, cheaper oil means it costs less to drive cars and heat houses, leaving more money to spend on other things. Lower oil prices could even mean less expensive air travel and better prices on goods as companies save money on fuel.
NO IT WON'T!
Don't they read own paper? Or is it just shoveling the $hit and forget it?
“That should be very good news for the vast majority of the United States,” said Ford O’Neil, manager of the Fidelity Total Bond Fund. “People are getting, in effect, a tax break. And it’s double so for those of us using oil in the Northeast.”
Related: Last Lame Duck Se$$ion
Another plus: Public companies are enjoying record profits, MFS’s Swanson said, and investing in their businesses. They’re also borrowing more, but corporate debt remains far below levels that helped get the economy into trouble in 2007 and 2008.
“The thing that kills us is abuse of credit,” Swanson said. “It’s on my worry list . . . what’s amazing about this business cycle is we are getting retail spending from the consumer and business profitability, without people leveraging up their balance sheets.”
If the economy stays on its current course, wages are eventually likely to rise.
Been being told that for years and it hasn't happened.
That would be welcome news among workers, but not necessarily on Wall Street.
“The issue for stock owners is wages, wages, wages,” Swanson said. “That’s the number one thing I’m watching.”
And how to keep them down (immigrants is a good way)!
--more--"
Related: The missing piece of the recovery is pay: Wages are barely keeping up with inflation
Then it is NOT a RECOVERY!
"Just when you thought the economy was roaring back to health, a former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan (right), is here to tell you otherwise. ‘‘The United States is doing better than anybody else, but we’re still not doing all that well,’’ Greenspan, 88, said Tuesday on Bloomberg Television’s ‘‘In the Loop’’ show. ‘‘We still have a very sluggish economy.’’ Greenspan said the economy won’t fully recover until US companies invest more in productive assets and the housing market bounces back. ‘‘Almost all of the weakness in the last four, five, six years has been in long-lived investments’’ in capital goods and real estate, Greenspan said. ‘‘Until these pick up, we’re not going to get the kind of vibrant growth that everyone is hoping for.’’
I wasn't expecting it.
At least there is always family:
"How wealth gap complicates sibling relationships" by Bernard Condon, Associated Press December 31, 2014
NEW YORK — When Jayson Seaver thinks about why he makes so much money while some Americans can’t catch a break, he thinks of the sacrifices he has made, the jobs he worked to pay for college, the 12-hour days he spends at the office.
And he thinks of his youngest sister, Jackie, whom he practically begged to go to college, and how she refused and is ‘‘paying for it’’ now, watching with envy while he flies around on vacation and enjoys his wealth.
At least that is how he sees it. She has a different view. But they do not talk much.
‘‘I’m disappointed in her,’’ said Jayson, 37. ‘‘I think it’s distanced us.’’
OMG!!!
Now the MOUTHPIECE of ELITE WEALTH is trying to DIVIDED FAMILIES!
Is there no level to their $hamele$$ne$$?
It is a story as old as humankind: about people raised in the same home, at the same time, by the same parents, who as adults land in vastly different financial circumstances.
Experts see a trend. The same forces that have increasingly separated the richest from everyone else are dividing brothers and sisters. It has given rise to a mix of often conflicting emotions: jealousy and resentment, disappointment and distance — but also frequently understanding and respect.
From 2009 through 2012, income for the wealthiest 1 percent of households surged 31 percent, after adjusting for inflation, according to research by economist Emmanuel Saez of the University of California Berkeley.
For everyone else, income inched up just 0.4 percent.
Look at the top of this post and then come back. Up and down.
It inched up how much?
As the wealth gap has widened, some mental health professionals have said they see more patients for whom such a divide has become a personal issue.
Yeah, forget that fat cat elite; you divide the family!!
Honestly, folks, the wound is now overflowing with salt from this $hit propaganda and agenda-pushing garbage.
In 35 years of practicing psychotherapy, Janna Malamud Smith has never had so many clients troubled by sibling wealth, she said. The complaints have grown so familiar that she can riff on them without pause:
‘‘ ‘My sibling can afford to join this country club, and I can’t.’ ‘My brother has houses in four countries, and why can’t he help me out?’ ’’
There is more than one reason Stuart Schneider and his siblings stopped speaking years ago. But Schneider, 53, thinks the problem began when he struck it rich in the late 1990s, selling high-end textiles, and began driving a Land Rover and sporting a Rolex watch.
‘‘I thought they would be proud of me,’’ he said, referring to his sister and recently deceased brother. ‘‘But it really wasn’t that way.’’
Likewise, VP Young Chang, co-owner of a Los Angeles clothes company, thought his cousins would be pleased he could afford a Ferrari and BMW 7 Series, until he showed up at a family party a few years ago in one of the cars.
‘‘It didn’t play well. It wasn’t, ‘Congrats, Buddy,’ ’’ said Chang, 38. ‘‘There was jealousy — ‘Why do you drive a BMW? We grew up the same.’ ’’
Now, when the family gets together, Chang borrows his mother’s van.
Yeah, the poor rich (although I doubt they are in the 1%).
A decade ago, sociologist Dalton Conley produced research suggesting that income inequality in America occurs as much within families as among them. Yet the similarities tend to end there. In comparing yourself with rich strangers, Conley noted, you can always convince yourself that they inherited wealth or attended elite schools or had parents with connections to lucrative jobs.
That doesn’t work if your brother or sister becomes wealthy. A disparity in siblings’ fortunes, Conley said, can feel like a judgment on intelligence or drive.
‘‘You had pretty much the same advantages and disadvantages growing up,’’ said Conley, author of ‘‘The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why.’’
Such tangled feelings about success and failure can have a public impact, too. How Americans feel about the wealth gap within their families shapes how they feel about it nationally — whether or not they see it as an inequity that must be addressed, said Lane Kenworthy, a sociologist at the University of California San Diego.
Economists ascribe the wealth gap to a range of factors. Some cite superstar pay for the financial and technological elite. Others highlight the role of low-wage workers overseas in shrinking wages for middle-class Americans or how machines and software are replacing people on factory floors and in office cubicles.
Poll results suggest a paradox in the public’s view: Americans might resent a wealthier sister or brother. Yet many people think the wealth gap is due mainly to the tendency of some people to work harder than others.
Yeah, it's all due to hard work, yup. Keep on shoveling those myths.
And it is not even clear that most Americans worry about income inequality anyway. Fewer than half in a Pew Research poll last year thought the gap between rich and poor a ‘‘very big problem,’’ nearly the lowest level among the 14 rich countries where Pew conducted polls.
That's what happens when the pre$$ is controlled by that same 1% (if you even believe that stinky, agenda-pushing poll).
‘‘They know, or think, it’s due to effort and choice’’ in their family, Kenworthy said. ‘‘And they think that’s probably how it works in the nation as a whole.’’
*******************
Economists differ about how much weight to give the various factors behind the wealth gap, but they generally agree on one thing: College matters, in part because many of the middle-income jobs once available to those who skipped it are disappearing....
As with the nation, so with the Seavers....
‘‘It’s self-motivation that’s at the root of success.’’
$ELF-$ERVING NARRATIVE from the MOUTHPIECE of the 1%!!!!
Yeah, that and access to capital!
************
Jeff Nash, 68, thinks the nation’s income gap largely reflects peoples’ varying talents and careers, a trend he sees in his own family. He became a stockbroker, then a venture capitalist. His brother chose acting, his half-sister, teaching.
‘‘There’s been income inequality since Adam and Eve,’’ he said. ‘‘Different siblings have different abilities.’’
Only 3 percent of Americans surveyed about the wealth gap by Gallup in March felt it was the country’s ‘‘most important problem,’’ fewer than those who cited foreign aid and immigration. Asked in an October poll by Pew Research to name the most important reason for the wealth gap, 24 percent chose ‘‘some work harder than others,’’ more than tax policies, foreign trade, or the educational system.
If true, I give up on the American people.
Among dozens of people interviewed by the Associated Press, many revealed similar views.
Jessica Sonday, 31, a software saleswoman in Oregon, said it is only natural that her brother, Benjamin, should earn multiples of her pay. He was always ‘‘academic’’ and focused on career, she more of the ‘‘social’’ type.
She went to work in radio after college. He earned a PhD in mathematics from Princeton, then made more than $200,000 at Goldman Sachs before joining an auction website for art collectors.
Nathan Spencer, 33, an insurance salesman in Raleigh, N.C., does think the wealth gap is a problem. Yet he was quick to defend the wealth of his brother, Eric, a partner at a New York architectural firm: ‘‘He worked hard and went to grad school; it’s well-deserved.’’
--more--"
I guess you folks will just have to blame the $chool:
"School left them with big debts, students say" by Megan Woolhouse, Globe Staff December 31, 2014
Many former students at Salter training schools, which are alleged by Attorney General Martha Coakley to have used dubious marketing to lure students, said the school offered false job promises about employment prospects that ultimately left them without jobs and mired in debt.
Scores of former students contacted the Globe after Salter recently agreed to pay $3.75 million to settle Coakley’s claims that the for-profit school misrepresented job-placement statistics and engaged in deceptive tactics to enroll students. Many were women who attended the schools’ medical health care training program, hoping to land well-paying jobs with regular hours.
***********
Salter’s settlement was the largest to date won by Coakley, who has been part of a national effort to change an industry that has left many students deep in debt and jobless, while reaping record profits. Coakley’s office has filed lawsuits against several for-profit schools and won hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements to reimburse students....
Big deal. She's all done, and the school is still operating!
Susan Bottomley, a 62-year-old widow who graduated from the medical billing and coding certificate program at the Fall River campus, said she was swept up by Salter’s promises that her training would one day lead to a job paying $40,000 a year or more.
She had been working as a Walmart cashier. She graduated in 2012 from the nine-month program, which she described as “a joke.”
She said she still owes about $12,000 in student loans. “It was such a waste of time and energy,” she said.
No, no! Whenever someone asks you what you are doing and you say "I'm going to school," people always answer back "good, good!"
********
Stephanie Tavares, 37, said she left a job of 15 years at a merchandizing company in New Bedford to attend the nine-month Salter School medical assistant program. The single mother of two said she was just weeks from graduating from the course when she learned that financial aid would not fully cover her tuition and that she would owe $7,000 in student loans. Upon graduation in 2011, job counselors at the school helped her for a few weeks, she said, but the only job offers she received were for per-diem positions without regular hours.
Tavares said she has since returned to her old job. The only difference in her life is that now she must pay a $65-a-month student loan bill. At least, she said, “I had a job to go back to.”
But economy and job market are great!
--more--"
At least things are great in Massachusetts:
"Economy finally started to improve in 2014" by Evan Horowitz, Globe Staff December 29, 2014
Told it has been for years!
Where has all the goddamn money gone?
The US economy had been stalled for so long that it was starting to seem like a permanent condition. But no more. In 2014, the economy began expanding, the job market tightened, and unemployment continued to fall.
All that’s missing at this point is for wages to go up and paychecks to get fatter. That hasn’t happened yet for the United States as a whole, but it has happened here in Massachusetts.
Yeah, sure.
***********
While the headline unemployment rate gets all the attention, there are better ways to measure the strength of the job market. One of them is just to look at the share of people who have jobs (or, even better, the share of people aged 25-54, the prime-age employment rate.)
Right, cut down the sample size, narrow the numbers counted, and everything looks great! great!
Related: “The story for the Massachusetts economy, if you ignore high levels of unemployment and inequality, is the economy has been performing very well.”
I'm so tired of reading economic fiction in my f***ing new$paper!!!!!!!!!
*********
Usually, when the job market is strong, wages go up. That happened here in Massachusetts in 2014, but the lack of nationwide wage growth has given some economy-watchers reason for doubt, but keeping an economy on track is no easy feat. Stimulate too much and you end up with high inflation. Too little, and there won’t be any growth.
YUP!
For now, the Federal Reserve is leaning towards stimulus, but 2015 may be the year when strong growth takes hold and it needs to shift in the other direction.
If we’re less lucky, it may also be the year when we’re stymied by some new roadblock. That could be the ongoing collapse of the Russian ruble, the general stagnation in Europe, or a possible slowdown in China.
WTF? Already laying groundwork for excusing continuing depression!
--more--"
At least you might be getting a raise:
"Minimum wage rising in much of US" by Katie Johnston, Globe Staff January 01, 2015
More states will increase their minimum wage in 2015 than in any other year in history following a national movement of low-wage workers, advocates, unions, and political leaders that raised alarms about the widening gap between rich and poor in the United States.
The minimum wage will rise this week in 20 states, including Massachusetts, where starting Thursday the rate jumps to $9 an hour, from $8.
Four other states will increase their minimum wage rates later this year.
By 2017, the minimum pay in Massachusetts will rise to $11 an hour — the highest in the nation.
It will still leave you behind on the purchasing power as the top sucks up more wealth, but so what? Treading water while sinking a little as time goes by is fun!
The wage raises provide an immediate, tangible effect for more than 3.1 million earners at the bottom of the income scale.
About 9 percent of the state’s workforce will get a raise.
**************
“It wasn’t just a conversation about income inequality,” said Lew Finfer, cochairman of Raise Up Massachusetts, the community coalition that led the effort to raise the state’s minimum wage. “There was also a chance to do something concrete about it.”
Rita Diaz will get a pay increase at both of her $8-an-hour jobs, at Popeyes in Roslindale and the clothing store CW Price in Dorchester. The 26-year-old will still have to live with her mother in Dorchester, but she said the additional earnings might allow her to get a bus pass more often instead of walking.
I will bet she is counted twice, too!
She also hopes she can give her mother more money for bills — and maybe even have enough left over to get her hair done once in a while.
************
Around the country, low-wage workers, from fast-food employees to retail staff to home health aides, took to picket lines to demand $15 an hour — they got results....
Charlene Conway, co-owner of the Carousel Family Fun Center in Fairhaven and Whitman, said she might have to lay off several members of her 40-person staff and “totally eliminate the younger workforce.”
They are a bunch of lazy s**ts, from what I read.
The roller rink used to pride itself on hiring teenagers, but Conway said she can’t justify paying a 14-year-old $9 an hour when she could hire an adult with more experience for the same rate.
“We’re hiring only over 18 [from now on],” she said. “There are lots of adults out there that need a second and third job.”
How about those needing JUST ONE?
***************
Radouane Fadel, a wheelchair attendant at Logan International Airport, has struggled to get by on $8 an hour.
I would have thought they paid more than that.
Fadel, 47, shares a room with his brother in an apartment in East Boston and rarely has money left after he pays his monthly bills and sends money to his wife in Morocco.
Thanks for sending it out of the country.
What is with the Globe anyway? The only people they can find to talk to are either Jewish or immigrants? WTF?
Airport workers are pursuing a wage of $15 an hour from the contractors that employ them, and the Massachusetts Port Authority recently voted to enact the state minimum wage increase a year ahead of schedule, requiring companies to pay workers at least $10 an hour as of Thursday and $11 next year.
Fadel said the $2 an hour raise wouldn’t change his life for the better. And yet he said it’s made him think about putting aside money to have root canals that could save three of his teeth.
He's not on Obummercare?
--more--"
Time to pull out of this post.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"US factory activity grew at the slowest pace in six months in December, weakened by declines in orders and production. Yet growth was still healthy, a sign manufacturing may help drive the economy’s expansion in 2015 as it did last year. December’s reading is the lowest since June. But it is also close to the average for all of 2014 and remains at a solid level. Americans are buying more cars and appliances, boosting demand for factory-made goods."
If you $ay $o.
