A Distinctive Taste
A collection and interpretation of media and influences. Designed for the mindset that appreciates style, substance, and creativity.
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In 2010, home ownership saw its biggest drop since the Great Depression while the number of vacant homes jumped a whopping 43.8% to 15 million. Sarah Ryler reports:
Over the past decade, the national home ownership rate decreased to 65.1 percent. That is still the second-highest rate since the Census started tracking housing characteristics in 1890 — when the home ownership rate was 47.8 percent. But it’s down from the mid-decade peak of 69 percent, when the mortgage-backed securities craze led banks to issue loans to just about anybody for little to nothing down.
Shout out to:thedailyfeed
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Amid turmoil of American economy, the richest just keep getting richer. Case in point, the combined wealth of the Forbes’ 400 richest jumped 12% this year to $1.5 trillion. That’s more than last year’s gross domestic product of South Korea.
Nearly three-quarters of the list are self-made billionaires, and all but one of the top 20 had year-over-year income increases. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was the biggest gainer — his earnings jumped by $10.6 billion to $17.5 billion, soaring to No. 14 on the list from No. 35 last year.
Compare those numbers to the latest census data, which found that, between 2009 and 2010, the median household income fell 2.2% to $50,046. Not a single state posted a statistically significant increase.
Shout out to:thedailyfeed
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Shan Carter and Amanda Cox of the New York Times explore the total financial cost of Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack ten years ago. In today’s dollar, their final tally is $3.3 trillion in and by the United States alone:
Al Qaeda spent roughly half a million dollars to destroy the World Trade Center and cripple the Pentagon. What has been the cost to the United States? In a survey of estimates by The New York Times, the answer is $3.3 trillion, or about $7 million for every dollar Al Qaeda spent planning and executing the attacks. While not all of the costs have been borne by the government — and some are still to come — this total equals one-fifth of the current national debt.
The interactive from which the above screenshot is taken explores war (and future war) funding, homeland security, economic consequences, veterans care and actual physical damage from the attacks.
Shout out to:futurejournalismproject
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Robert Reich: The Limping Middle Class (via kateoplis)
shout out to:azspot
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Link reblogged from Money Is Not Important
“I stopped wasting time on what people claimed a stock was worth and started looking at the numbers,” he says. “This may surprise you, but there were a large number of valuable buys during the Depression.”
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Photo reblogged from Money Is Not Important
The Idiot’s Guide to the S&P Credit Downgrade
On August 5th, Standard and Poor’s downgraded the United State’s sterling AAA rating to AA+. But what does this letter grade really mean for consumers and citizens? We have compiled a guide to help steer you through the ups and downs of sovereign credit ratings.
(Click on the title above to learn more.)
Via Column Five for Visible
This is awesome. Thanks, ColumnFive!
shout out to:
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Video reblogged from PBS NewsHour
The top 20 percent of Americans now holds 84 percent of U.S. wealth, as Paul Solman found out as part of a Making Sen$e series on economic inequality.
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In my view, the American dream of striking it rich is merely a well-marketed fantasy that keeps the bottom 99.5% hoping for better and prevents social and political instability. The odds of getting into that top 0.5% are very slim and the door is kept firmly shut by those within it.
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China Has Emerged As a Major Global Consumer of Luxury Goods.
I am sure this is no surprise. The surprise comes in it’s scale.
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Our map of economic hell has all of this week’s bad news. Sorry, tumblr.
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Link reblogged from BLOGGING via TYPEWRITER.
- Monthly budgets might take a hit. Treasury would have to conserve cash and prioritize its payments, endangering the estimated 80 million checks the government pays each month, including 56 million to Social Security beneficiaries and 8.3 million to disabled citizens. The elderly, the disabled and anyone else counting on the government for unemployment assistance, food stamps or other benefits would feel the pinch.
- Federal employees and contractors might not get paid. The federal government also processes an estimated 3.9 million payments each month for federal workers’ salaries as well as 1.8 million to non-defense contractors who do work for the government.
- It might become more difficult to get a job. Consumers might hold back on spending, giving businesses even less confidence to hire people during a time when the economy is already growing at an anemic 1.3 percent. Anyone standing in the unemployment line could find it increasingly difficult to land a job.
- It could become more expensive to get a loan. If the governments defaults on its debt, investors would demand that the Treasury pay them a higher interest rate to compensate for the added risk of lending money to the United States. That would send interest rates higher on mortgage loans, home equity lines of credit and car loans, because Treasury rates act as a benchmark for these and many other types of consumer loans.
- Retirement portfolios might take a hit.
- Local improvement projects could get delayed or cancelled.
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Photo reblogged from The Economist
A separate cover, this week, for readers in Asia. Our special report on China examines why tensions between the country’s prosperous middle classes and its poor will make it a harder country to govern
via: theeconomist
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Economy: The Credit Crisis Visualized.
This is probably the one most comprehensive videos on the credit crises I have seen to date. If you know of anymore please share. Animated by Jonathan Jarvis
