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In 2009, the Forbes top 400 wealth averaged $3.2 billion - 523% higher than 1982. Their collective net worth was $1.3 trillion. Today it's greater.
"In the foreseeable future, there is no reason to believe that the large and increasingly wider disparities in wealth holdings will change or reverse direction." The imbalance, in fact, almost certainly will get greater as America's wealthy prosper while poverty overall soars.
During the "Great Recession," 8.4 million jobs were lost, and long-term unemployment and underemployment registered record highs.
Because of the deepening housing depression, home equity as a percent of property value fell from 59.5% in 2006 Q I to 36.2% in 2009 Q IV. "For the first time on record, the percent of home value (owned outright by homeowners) dropped below 50% - meaning that banks now own more of the nation's housing stock than people do." Moreover, one-fourth of mortgage holders are under water because of rising debt and plummeting prices.
Homeowners' equity as a percent of home value fell from around 70% in the early 1970s to 36.2% in Q I 2009.
The most recent data beyond this study's timeline show an even greater decline. According to the Case-Shiller index, today's housing crisis exceeds the Great Depression. Still declining valuations have fallen 33% compared to 31% from the late 1920s to the 1930s' bottom. Nonetheless, housing prices remain high by historical standards, suggesting more to the downside, perhaps much more without nowhere in sight remedial help.
EPI concluded that recovery "has yet to bring substantial relief to those suffering" from an economic crisis showing no signs of ebbing. Growing evidence, in fact, suggests much greater trouble ahead, what some observers call America's Greatest Depression, a condition with global contagion.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at Email address removed.
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