Be Ever Vigilant in 2014

Mainstream media's steady drum beat -- the economy has recovered – the Great Recession is over.. Unemployment is down. Home sales are up. GDP is expanding. In 1995, the Atlantic Monthly online published an article titled - “If the GDP is Up, Why is America Down?”Good question then, an even better question now.

GDP – Gross Domestic Product – is the primary indicator of economic well being. GDP measures all economic activity of a given economy, the United States, for example. It is a clumsy method of measurement. Since GDP includes all economic activity, productive and destructive economic activity are added together and dumped in the same pot. Increased medical costs; ever larger law enforcement budgets; building more prisons; cigarette sales; alcohol sales; gambling; strip clubs; promotion of fast food and unhealthy foods; spending for deferred maintenance of infrastructure. Citizens are consumers. We are no longer producers. Everything is monetized. The things that families and communities do for each other, are never measured at all. The intangible, the free assistance, the neighbor to neighbor help is never included, never measured, never mentioned.

Unemployment – According to mainstream media Florida unemployment is at 6.4% - not bad. However, my sources tell me that the quality of the jobs is sub par. There are many part time workers, not out of choice, but because part time work is all they could find. Others are underemployed, college graduates working at low level jobs, because that's all there was available. If you don't have a connection, a relative who owns a business or can influence hiring it's tough. Hardest hit are the twenty somethings who are now competing with older more experienced workers for the same low paying job. And don't forget all those who have given up hope of ever finding work, and rely on their family, government, or the underground economy to support themselves.

Housing Market – According to mainstream media, the Florida housing market has recovered; or at the very least is well on its way to recovery. There is a shortage of inventory (that's houses). Interest rates are low. Around two thirds of home buyers pay cash. However, there is a second side to each and every one of these statements. The inventory shortage is caused by the lack of new construction due to the lack of demand; and foreclosed and bank owned homes that were allowed to deteriorate after the homeowners left. Cash is king in home buying, and much of the cash is foreign cash. Even Florida residents with good credit who easily qualify for a new mortgage are edged out by a cash buyer. And interest rates are still low, Except for government backed loan programs like FHA and VA, home buyers need a credit score of at least 620. For some people, a 620 credit score may be easy to achieve, however, many people took a credit score beating due to job loss, causing a domino effect to their personal finances. And although, as the Miami Herald reported in August 2013, that new foreclosure filings were down in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, but auction notices and bank repossessions were up. More people out of their homes.

My post on this blog – Civil Indigent Status – Florida - – has had more traffic by far, than any of my other posts. Likewise, of the top ten keywords used to reach www.faldp.org – six of them included indigent or indigent status as part of the key word. Our world financial crisis is far from over, although there are pockets of improvement. I have high hopes for this year – and suggest that we all be vigilant. Look past the headlines, ask the questions, show compassion for others, and be ever vigilant in protecting you and yours from financial disaster.

Wall Street Owns the Country

Wall Street Owns The Country

A Speech by Mary Elizabeth Lease (circa 1890)

"This is a nation of inconsistencies. The Puritans fleeing from oppression became oppressors. We fought England for our liberty and put chains on four million of blacks. We wiped out slavery and our tariff laws and national banks began a system of white wage slavery worse than the first. Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. The West and South are bound and prostrate before the manufacturing East. Money rules, and our Vice-President is a London banker. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us. We were told two years ago to go to work and raise a big crop, that was all we needed. We went to work and plowed and planted; the rains fell, the sun shone, nature smiled, and we raised the big crop that they told us to; and what came of it? Eight-cent corn, ten-cent oats, two-cent beef and no price at all for butter and eggs-that's what came of it. The politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States, and over 100,000 shopgirls in New York are forced to sell their virtue for the bread their niggardly wages deny them... We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the foreclosure system wiped out... We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us. The people are at bay; let the bloodhounds of money who dogged us thus far beware."

And so it goes ...