{"id":2692,"date":"2010-08-28T02:13:52","date_gmt":"2010-08-28T09:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=2692"},"modified":"2010-08-28T02:13:52","modified_gmt":"2010-08-28T09:13:52","slug":"americans-savings-the-last-wealth-to-be-redistributed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/08\/28\/americans-savings-the-last-wealth-to-be-redistributed\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans’ Savings: The Last Wealth to Be Redistributed?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you ask what caused the housing bubble, you’ll get dozens of different answers, mostly relating to the mechanics of the crisis.  Conservatives love to spuriously blame Fannie and Freddie.  Liberals love to blame Wall Street and predatory lending.  But in my opinion, none of these were the cause.  The cause was the Republican Party\u2019s only successful policy initiative: No Millionaire Left Behind<\/em><\/strong>.  When what was deceptively promised to trickle down gushed up, Americans found themselves facing stagnant wages.  For the first time since the great depression, wages failed to keep pace with inflation during the Bush Regime, even using the spurious consumer price index, which considers such daily necessities as food and fuel too volatile to be included.  Thus, Americans of all classes, except the uber-rich, found themselves struggling to pay their monthly bills.  Hoping that things were about to improve, and believing the false common wisdom that real estate would always increase in value, they used the equity in their homes just to make ends meet.  Republicans facilitated this trend and used it to further redistribute wealth upward.  Sadly, the situation has not changed.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"GOPgreed\"<\/a> Report reveals that Americans are making due with less and don’t have the money to put into stock funds, and many are taking money out of their investments to pay for basic necessities like food, clothing and shelter.<\/p>\n

ICI reports that <\/span>equity mutual funds suffered net withdrawals totaling over $33 billion<\/span><\/a> in the first seven months of 2010. Myriad reasons were cited for the trend, including a mistrust of stocks, the flash crash and an aging population. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

With wages stagnant for those who still have a job "a lot of people are having to tap into their nest egg to keep their living standards going,"<\/span> says Damien Hoffman, co-founder of WallStCheatSheet. "A lot of people are living out of principal. There’s no other way to get around that."<\/span><\/p>\n

Fidelity’ <\/span>recent report<\/span><\/a> of a sharp increase in the number of 401(k) participants seeking loans or hardship withdrawals in the second quarter is further evidence of the disappearing middle class.<\/span> "These are basically emergency ways to fund yourself. We think it’s a scary statistic," <\/span>Hoffman says. <\/span>"Where is the middle class going to be if they draw down their 401(k)s drastically over course of next few years?" <\/span>[Yahoo]<\/span><\/p>\n

… [emphasis original<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <The Vile Plutocrat<\/a>><\/p>\n

This shift is the harbinger of the next crisis.  Millions of Americans will retire with nothing but social security for their support.  Worse yet, the Republicans are trying to deliver that money to Wall Street, and have nothing to offer, except No Millionaire Left Behind<\/em><\/strong>: the cause of the crisis.<\/font><\/p>\n

Every Republican in Office is one Republican too many!<\/font><\/strong><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you ask what caused the housing bubble, you’ll get dozens of different answers, mostly relating to the mechanics of the crisis.  Conservatives love to spuriously blame Fannie and Freddie.  Liberals love to blame Wall Street and predatory lending.  But in my opinion, none of these were the cause.  The cause was the Republican Party\u2019s […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2692\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}