10/22/09 Stockholm, Sweden – “Two Americas; trust me it’s more than a campaign slogan,” writes Robert Lenzer for Huffington Post.
On the one side are the dizzying market “rally,” and the Wall Street compensation and bonuses that have grown right alongside that beast. On the other side is the rest of the economy which, in stark contrast, is filled with people losing jobs and who are unable to make ends meet. His point? It’s simply that “a bull market can’t last forever in a weak economy.”
On the jobs front, roughly 2.5 million open positions are being chased after by about 15 million people. While the length of time it takes to find work continues to increase, Americans still wrestle with record levels of debt that they try to pay down.
Interestingly, as a panacea to the masses, the Federal Housing Administration offers mortgages with only 3.5 percent down. And, in that particular offer the second America does get treated a bit like Wall Street. As Lenzer notes, “that’s leverage approaching 30-to-1, the kind that brought down Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.”
The current phony rally can offer the illusion of a growing economy, but if it’s not linked to change and real growth in that “other” America… the one most of us live in.. it’s a phony boom.
More details are available in The Huffington Post’s cautionary tale of the weak economy and the bull market.
Rocky Vega
Rocky Vega is publisher of Agora Financial International, where he advances the growth of Agora Financial publishing enterprises outside of the US. Previously, he was publisher of The Daily Reckoning, and founding publisher of both UrbanTurf and RFID Update -- which he ran from Brazil, Chile, and Puerto Rico -- as well as associate publisher of FierceFinance. Rocky has an honors MS from the Stockholm School of Economics and an honors BA from Harvard University, where he served on the board of directors for Let’s Go Publications, Harvard Student Agencies, and The Harvard Advocate.
The Daily Reckoning is your premier source for making sense of the news Washington and Wall Street generate. Each business day, The Daily Reckoning calls on its stable of world-class writers and thinkers to show you how to get ahead.
Start your 100% FREE subscription to The Daily Reckoning today and you’ll get a free research report, “How to Survive the Fall of Social Security.” Simply enter your email address below to get your free report and join over 495,000 worldwide Daily Reckoning subscribers!
We Respect Your Privacy and We will
Never Share or Sell Your Email Address
