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WALL STREET'S WORST NIGHTMARE: The 'Millionaire Madam' Is Getting Ready To Make A Deal

WALL STREET'S WORST NIGHTMARE: The 'Millionaire Madam' Is Getting Ready... more

11dim
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Fluke Dismisses Limbaugh Apology: PCW Super Tuesday Spectacular-Hour 1 « Political Championship Wrestling

Tonight on PCW Super Tuesday Spectacular Battelle Hall Columbus, OH Tuesday March... more

PCWPolWrestling
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Bruce Springsteen Slams Wall Street Pillaging of America In Powerful New Anthem "VIDEO"

Here are the lyrics: No cannonballs did fly No rifles cut us down No bombs fell... more

Radical_Centrist
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Welcome to the 1 percent recovery

That elite sliver reaped 93 percent of the post-recession income gains. Is extreme inequality America's new normal?

There was a brief debate focused on the following question: Would the gains of the economy continue to accrue to the top 1 percent once the recovery started, or would they have a weak post-recession showing in terms of raw income growth as well as income share of the economy? The top 1 percent had a rough Great Recession. They absorbed 50 percent of the income losses, and their share of income dropped from 23.5 percent to 18.1 percent. Was this a new state of affairs, or would the 1 percent bounce back in 2010?

We finally have the estimated data for 2010 by income percentile, and it turns out that the top 1 percent had a fantastic year. The data is in the World Top Income Database, as well as Emmanuel Saez’s updated “Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States” (as well as the excel spreadsheet on his webpage). Timothy Noah has a first set of responses here. The takeaway quote from Saez is, “the top 1 percent captured 93 percent of the income gains in the first year of recovery.”

The bottom 90 percent of Americans lost $127, the bottom 99 percent of Americans gained $80, and the top 1 percent gained $105,637. The bottom 99 percent is net positive for the year due to around $125 in average capital gains. They can take comfort in efforts by the right to set the capital gains tax to 0 percent, which would have netted them an additional couple dozen bucks.

(Also, just to show “the top 1 percent captured 93 percent of the income gains in the first year of recovery” isn’t some sort of stats juke, you can take $105,637 and divide it by the the number you get when you add $80 times 99 to $105,637 times 1. That number is 93 percent, which is the share of income gains the 1 percent took home.)

And if this wasn’t obvious, you can see the gains become quite high the farther you walk up the inequality ladder. When we discuss things like the Buffett Rule or taxing capital gains as ordinary income, it is important to see how top-heavy that capital gains distribution actually is.

This should also be put in the historical frame of looking at 2002 onward. I’m going to normalize some percentiles by their average income in 2002 and show how they have moved going into and out of the recession. This takes the income distribution in 2002 as granted — and any movements from there on out reflect changes from that income. I’m going to exclude capital gains for this chart to show it’s a deeper phenomenon than the stock market, though the effects are the same in either case (click through for larger image): http://rortybomb.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/saez_chart.png?w=640&h=368

The Great Recession dropped income for the bottom 99 percent by 11.6 percent, completely wiping out the meager gains of the Bush years. And crucially, while 2010 was a year of continued stagnation for the economy as a whole, the 1 percent began to show strong gains even when capital gains are excluded.

As you can imagine, this has increased the percentage of the economic pie that the top 1 percent takes home. As Saez notes, “excluding realized capital gains, the top decile share in 2010 is equal to 46.3 percent, higher than in 2007.”

There are two things worth mentioning. There’s an interesting debate within left-liberal circles about whether or not elite economic interests benefit from a weak recovery, benefit more from a strong recovery, are vaguely indifferent to the United States economy, are impotent during the recession, or are more interested in pursuing other agendas during the instability caused by mass unemployment. These numbers are certainly a point for the argument that the rich are doing just fine, and to whatever extent they’d be doing better with more robust growth and employment, it isn’t putting a damper on their earnings.

It’s also worth mentioning that, pre-recession, inequality hadn’t been that high since the Great Depression, and we are quickly returning to that state. It’s important to remember that a series of choices were made during the New Deal to react to runaway inequality, including changes to progressive taxation, financial regulation, monetary policy, labor unionization, and the provisioning of public goods and guaranteed social insurance. A battle will be fought over the next decade — it’s already been fought for the past three years — on all these fronts. The subsequent resolution will determine how broadly shared prosperity is going forward and whether our economy will continue to be as unstable as it has been.

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/05/welcome_to_the_1_percent_recovery/singleton/That elite sliver reaped 93 percent of the post-recession income gains. Is extreme... more

JRBarilla
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Sick of Gas Prices? Blame Wall Street Speculators, Not the President (VIDEO)

The President has no more power over the price of gas than Newt Gingrich has over his... more

StewSteve
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3 months ago
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Anonymous is Declaring War on All Who Oppose Freedom 2012

No more tyranny, no more oppression, no more corporate slavery or police brutality. We... more

JRBarilla
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3 months ago
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One Out Of Every Ten Wall Street Employees Is A Psychopath, Say Researchers

... A clinical psychopath is bright, gregarious and charming, writes DeCovny. He lies... more

regroce
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3 months ago
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Bed Peace & Occupy St Valentine’s Day 02-22-2012

Bed Peace & Occupy St Valentine’s Day 02-22-2012 -... more

critic [removed]
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3 months ago
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4 comments

Inverted Totalitarianism and the Corporate State

Stricken with a terminal disease, the decline of traditional society is unavoidable.... more

JRBarilla
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3 months ago
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Ron Paul in Oklahoma City 2/25/12

Talks Wall Street Corruption, Occupy Movement, Bipartisanship... more

JRBarilla
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3 months ago
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The Federal Reserve Makes Money Disappear

Washington, DC -- Say goodbye to the almighty dollar. In a unanimous decision, the... more

mbalton
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3 months ago
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1 comment

Tony Destructo: Occupy Jerktown

Destructo defends the 99 percent!

TonyDiGerolamo
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3 months ago
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'Stockblockers': Stewart Takes on Congressional Insider Trading (VIDEO)

Congress tried to tackle this particular form of corruption by introducing the STOCK... more

StewSteve
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3 months ago
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Shit Wall Street Says (VIDEO)

A Wall Street version of the "Sh*t ______ Says" video series is finally... more

dryeraser
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3 months ago
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Filtered Stew: Mitt Romney's Bogus Attacks on Obama Socialism

A few brief talking points against Mitt's claims of how "Obama... more

StewSteve
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3 months ago
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2 comments

Democracy Began in Athens and Ended on Wall Street

Greek Citizens are rioting in the streets, burning cars and buildings, as they react with revulsion to the austerity measures demanded by the EU and passed by their own Parliament. Fire bombs and tear gas fill the streets as Greeks are being sold into virtual indentured servitude to the French and German Banks in order to protect these banks from the consequences of their reckless lending practices. Punishing budget measures that are all the more offensive, in that most observers expect that the Greeks will, in the end, have to default on their debt at some point anyway.

And behind it all are the same Wall Street Banksters that brought us the housing bubble and subsequent financial crisis here in the US. It was Goldman Sachs who was responsible for developing and marketing the "innovative financial products and solutions" that allowed the Greek debt problem to reach the proportions it has today. See these stories from Forbes, the NYTimes and Germany's "Der Spiegel".

http://www.forbes.com/sites/streettalk/2010/02/18/goldman-sachs-shorted-greek-debt-after-it-arranged-those-shady-swaps/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/global/14debt.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,676634,00.html

Further, although the markets are not transparent, Wall Street Banks are almost certainly exposed in a big way to European Sovereign Debt through Credit Default Swaps and other derivatives. That is why it was seen as so important that Greek Debt be restructured in a "voluntary" fashion so as not to create an "event of default". The issuers of CDS's likely don't have the capacity to pay in the event of a default and consequently would fail. (Why this situation is allowed to persist is a whole other conversation.) While their counter parties holding the CDS's could be similarly ruined, since the insurance they were (ostensilby) counting on to hedge their own exposure would be deemed worthless.

Yes, make no mistake, this is NOT a Greek bailout. This is another back door Bank Bailout. Another Wall Street bailout. When are we going to wake up? I think that I just heard the alarm clock go off in Greece.Greek Citizens are rioting in the streets, burning cars and buildings, as they react... more

Gordon_Shumway
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4 months ago
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A letter to a Wall Street banker from his son + An Open Letter from Black Blocs anarchist to Occupy Wall Street

You Should be Proud I’m Not a Coward Like You Dad. ----- It’s all fraud... more

worrg
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4 months ago
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Yes! We Do Have Bananas; We’re a Banana Republic Today!

The 1922 novelty song endures as a relevant absurdist metaphor, most prominently... more

Fishinflick
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4 months ago
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Ethos (Director's Cut) - Hosted by Woody Harrelson

Ethos, a powerful new documentary hosted by Woody Harrelson, is an investigation into... more

JRBarilla
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4 months ago
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TARP Bailout Recipients Receive Huge Bonuses (VIDEO)

One of those recipients was Robert Benmosche, the CEO of AIG, you know, the firm that... more

StewSteve
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4 months ago
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