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What China will be left with a poisoned land stripped of talent and capital.

Corruption isn’t just bribes and influence-peddling: it’s protecting the privileges of the few at the expense of the many. Rampant pollution is corruption writ large: the profits of the polluters are being protected at the expense of the millions being poisoned.

This is why capital and talent are fleeing China: systemic corruption has poisoned the nation and raised the cost of doing business. External costs such as environmental damage must be paid eventually, one way or the other.

Either the cost is paid in rising chronic illnesses, shorter lifespans and declining productivity, or profits and tax revenues must be siphoned off to clean up the damage and the sources of environmental degradation.

In large-scale industrial economies such as China and the U.S., that cost is measured not in billions of dollars but in hundreds of billions of dollars over a long period of time.

I have often noted that one key reason why the U.S. economy stagnated in the 1970s was the enormous external costs of runaway industrialization were finally paid in reduced profits and higher taxes.

China’s manufacturing base simply isn’t profitable enough to pay for the remedial clean-up and pollution controls needed to make China livable. That means labor and all the other sectors will have to pay the costs via higher taxes.

Pollution and environmental damage is driving away human capital, i.e. talent.This loss of talent is difficult to quantify, but it’s not just foreigners who have worked in China for years who are pulling up stakes to escape pollution and repression–talented young Chinese are finding jobs elsewhere for the same reasons.

The game-changer is automation, i.e. robots and software eating the world. To understand the impact on China, let’s start with unit labor costs, i.e. the cost of labor needed to produce each unit of output.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Macau’s Economy Blows Up

September 1, 2015

Macau’s Economy Blows Up

China’s crackdown on corruption, or at least the ostentatious display of the spoils of corruption, and its selective hunt for corrupt officials, which to some observers resembles a political purge, may or may not tamp down on actual corruption, which is what greases the wheels in the Chinese economy. But it’s certainly doing a number on Macau.

Macau is the only place in China where Chinese can legally gamble away their wealth without having to resort to the stock market or other schemes. It’s also a convenient place where they can circumvent China’s currency controls to siphon money out of China and send it to “safe havens,” such as over-priced homes in the most expensive trophy cities in the US near the peak of US Housing Bubble 2.

Until February 2014, Macau was on an awesome ride that had kicked off in 2001, when it permitted foreign casino operators to build gambling palaces. In 2002, Macau became the number one gambling destination in the world. Even during the Financial-Crisis, Macau’s gaming revenues rose nearly 10%. These endlessly soaring revenues were a thermometer into China’s economic boom.

So in its crackdown on corruption, China is hitting Macau in both departments: scaring high-rollers away and monkey-wrenching its capital-controls evasion machinery. And this year, Macau has taken a third blow: the deteriorating economy in mainland China.

As a result, Macau’s real GDP plunged 24.5% in the first quarter year-over-year and then went ahead and plunged an even more terrible 26.4% in the second quarter, to 77.5 billion Macau patacas ($9.7 billion), the lowest level since early 2011.

The Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) in its report today blamed “exports of gaming services,” as it calls gambling revenues that had plunged 40.5% year over year, and “exports of other tourism services,” which had plunged 21.5%. “Total exports of services” crashed by 35.9%.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Malaysia Bans The Color Yellow As Protests Swell Into The Hundreds Of Thousands

August 30, 2015

Malaysia Bans The Color Yellow As Protests Swell Into The Hundreds Of Thousands

The anti-government protests that swept through the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur on Saturday continued unabated on Sunday after tens of thousands of demonstrators camped in the streets overnight.

Emboldened by the presence of influential former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, protesters chanced being confronted with water cannons and tear gas, which police used to disperse crowds at previous Bersih rallies.

As we detailed on Saturday, calls for the ouster of Prime Minister Najib Razak have grown louder in recent months after the government appeared to be obstructing an investigation into how more than $600 million in funds from a Goldman-backed development bank ended up in Najib’s personal bank account.Mahathir Mohamad, who many say still hasn’t accepted the fact that he hasn’t been Prime Minister since 2003, has called for a no-confidence vote and insists that the man he handpicked to govern “has to go.”

Estimates of Sunday’s crowd varied slightly depending on who you listen to. Police, for instance, say the gathering attracted around 20,000 protesters while Bersih insists the number was closer to 300,000.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“No Recovery For You!” Brazil Officially Enters Recession, Goldman Calls Numbers “Disquieting”

August 28, 2015

“No Recovery For You!” Brazil Officially Enters Recession, Goldman Calls Numbers “Disquieting”

Well, you know what they say: when it rains it pours, especially when you’re the poster child for an epic emerging market unwind and you’re suffering through the worst stagflation in over a decade while trying to clean up the feces ahead of the summer Olympics.. or something.

Make no mistake, Brazil is in a tough spot.

Here’s a list of problems: 1) collapsing commodity prices, 2) the worst inflation-growth outcome in over a decade, 3) deficits on both the fiscal and current accounts, 4) street protests calling for the President to be sacked, 5) a plunging currency, 6) allegations of rampant government corruption. And we could go on.

On Friday, the latest quarterly GDP print shows the country sliding into recession (of course these determinations are always backward looking and just about every indicator one cares to observe seems to show that the economy is closer to depression than it is to the early stages of recession) as output contracted 1.9% in Q2. Here’s the summary from Barclays:

Q2 15 real GDP in Brazil surprised on the downside, contracting -1.9% q/q sa and compatible with a y/y print of -2.6%. This follows a downwardly revised -0.7% q/q sa Q1 real GDP print (previous: -0.2%), and also a flat real GDP print in Q4 14 (previous: 0.3% q/q sa). As a matter of fact, the past three quarters were revised to the downside, which now implies a strong negative carry-over for this year: if real GDP is flat in H2 15, the annual growth would be -2.3%.

Relative to our forecast, household consumption, fixed-assets investments and imports all surprised on the downside. These components reflect the adverse conditions for domestic demand, as a reflection of higher inflation, interest rates, fall in income and weaker currency.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Indian anti-corruption official: state “orchestrated” Islamist terror

August 26, 2015

Indian anti-corruption official: state “orchestrated” Islamist terror

Mumbai atrocities enabled by intelligence operations of India, Pakistan and the United States

A senior Indian police officer and anti-corruption investigator last month accused the Indian government of orchestrating the Mumbai terror attacks which occurred nearly seven years ago, according to an Indian government official.

R. V. S. Mani, a former undersecretary in India’s home ministry now in the urban development ministry, testified in July that a senior police officer who investigated the 2004 ‘encounter killings’ of four Indian Muslims in Gujarat by the Ahmedabad Police Crime Branch, had told him that the 2008 Mumbai attacks were “set up” by the Indian government.

The police officer, Satish Verma — currently Principal at the Police Training College in Junagadh — is well-known for his secondment to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India’s elite anti-corruption law enforcement agency, to lead the probe into the 2004 ‘encounter killings.’

The 2004 victims were Ishrat Jahan Raza, a 19-year-old girl from Mumbra, Maharashtra, and three men — Pranesh Pillai (alias Javed Gulam Sheikh), Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar. Gujarat police authorities with the support of Indian government officials claimed that the killings were justified due to credible intelligence linking the four to Islamist terrorists.

Anti-corruption investigator blames government for terror

According to Mani, who has signed affidavits submitted to court on the encounter killings, Satish Verma privately accused successive Indian governments of “orchestrating” not only the Mumbai terror attacks, but also the December 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi.

Verma made the allegations while questioning Mani on Indian government claims that intelligence proved Ishrat Jahan’s links to Islamist terrorists. According to the Times of India, the former home ministry official revealed in his affidavits that Verma had said the terror attacks were set up by the government “with the objective of strengthening the counter-terror legislation.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Central Banks Have Become A Corrupting Force

August 24, 2015

Central Banks Have Become A Corrupting Force

Are we witnessing the corruption of central banks? Are we observing the money-creating powers of central banks being used to drive up prices in the stock market for the benefit of the mega-rich?

These questions came to mind when we learned that the central bank of Switzerland, the Swiss National Bank, purchased 3,300,000 shares of Apple stock in the first quarter of this year, adding 500,000 shares in the second quarter. Smart money would have been selling, not buying.

It turns out that the Swiss central bank, in addition to its Apple stock, holds very large equity positions, ranging from $250,000,000 to $637,000,000, in numerous US corporations — Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Google, Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, Procter & Gamble, Verizon, AT&T, Pfizer, Chevron, Merck, Facebook, Pepsico, Coca Cola, Disney, Valeant, IBM, Gilead, Amazon.

Among this list of the Swiss central bank’s holdings are stocks which are responsible for more than 100% of the year-to-date rise in the S&P 500 prior to the latest sell-off.

What is going on here?

The purpose of central banks was to serve as a “lender of last resort” to commercial banks faced with a run on the bank by depositors demanding cash withdrawals of their deposits.

Banks would call in loans in an effort to raise cash to pay off depositors. Businesses would fail, and the banks would fail from their inability to pay depositors their money on demand.

As time passed, this rationale for a central bank was made redundant by government deposit insurance for bank depositors, and central banks found additional functions for their existence. The Federal Reserve, for example, under the Humphrey-Hawkins Act, is responsible for maintaining full employment and low inflation. By the time this legislation was passed, the worsening “Phillips Curve tradeoffs” between inflation and employment had made the goals inconsistent. The result was the introduction by the Reagan administration of the supply-side economic policy that cured the simultaneously rising inflation and unemployment.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Honduran Coup’s Ugly Aftermath

August 20, 2015

The Honduran Coup’s Ugly Aftermath

Exclusive: As Secretary of State in 2009, Hillary Clinton helped a right-wing coup in Honduras remove an elected left-of-center president, setting back the cause of democracy and enabling corrupt and drug-tainted forces to tighten their grip on the poverty-stricken country, as Jonathan Marshall explains.

Imelda Marcos will forever be remembered for her hoard of 3,000 pairs of shoes, an ostentatious symbol of the billions of dollars in spoils she amassed as First Lady of the Philippines. Now shoes are again emerging as a symbol of corruption, this time in Honduras, where prosecutors are investigating allegations that a former first lady improperly purchased, or never distributed, 42,100 pairs of shoes for the poor, at a cost to the state of $348,000.

The allegations are just the latest to surface in a wide-ranging corruption investigation that has reenergized grass-roots politics and triggered a nationwide protest movement in Central America’s original “banana republic.”

Every Friday evening for the past three months, thousands of protesters have marched through the streets of Tegucigalpa and smaller cities, carrying torches and signs reading “The corrupt have ripped apart my country” and “Enough is enough.”

The protesters, who call themselves the oposición indignada (the outraged opposition), demand that President Juan Orlando Hernández be held accountable for fraud and graft, which allegedly bled the national health service of more than $200 million to enrich senior officials and finance the 2013 election.

“This is a really historic time in Central America,” said an analyst for the International Crisis Group. “The question is whether this will really turn into a critical juncture in which society, civil organizations, the private sector and political parties can . . . come together in making the best out of this opportunity [to begin] cleaning up our state institutions.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hundreds Of Thousands Take To The Streets In Brazil Demanding President’s Impeachment

August 16, 2015

Hundreds Of Thousands Take To The Streets In Brazil Demanding President’s Impeachment

Protests are underway in Brazil as hundreds of thousands take to the streets to call for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. Here’s Bloomberg:

An estimated 25,000 protesters in Brasilia marched toward Congress, chanting against Rousseff and corruption, carried a long banner demanding “Impeachment Now.”

Rouseff monitored proceedings from her official residence, due to meet with some of her cabinet in the afternoon, said Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo.

juliana barbassa @jbarbassa

Protest in #Rio #Brazil: “Military intervention is not a crime” via @tariqpanja UNBELIEVABLE.

10:35 AM – 16 Aug 2015.

Background:

When the world’s foremost mainstream media outlets begin to run stories with titles like: “How to Impeach a Brazilian President: A Step-by-Step Guide“, you know your political career may be in trouble.

Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff – who recently became the country’s most unpopular democratically elected president since a military dictatorship ended in 1985, with an approval rating of just 8% – faces a litany of problems, not the least of which are accusations around fabricated fiscal account data and corruption at Petrobras where she was chairwoman from 2003 to 2010.

But beyond that, Brazil is mired in stagflation and, as Morgan Stanley recently noted, is at the center of the global EM unwind triggered by falling commodity prices, slowing demand from China, and an imminent Fed rate hike. Underscoring the depth of the economic malaise is the following graphic from Goldman which shows that when it comes to inflation-growth outcomes, it doesn’t get much worse than what Brazil suffered through in Q2.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Forest Service Official Who Let Nestle Drain California Water Now Works For Them

August 15, 2015

Forest Service Official Who Let Nestle Drain California Water Now Works For Them

An ongoing investigation by The Desert Sun into Nestle’s contentious bottled water operations in drought-stricken California first disclosed that the company’s permit to draw water had a rather astonishing expiration date that occurred over a quarter century ago, in 1988. Recently, the Sunreported an update in the investigation with a jaw-dropping twist: the Forest Service — not Nestle — is the agency primarily responsible for failing to renew Nestle’s permit.

In fact, judging by the government agency’s complete inability to even review Nestle’s long-expired permit — not to mention the lucrative job a retired Forest Service supervisor currently enjoys — there is an arguable case that collusion and corruption are at the heart of the entire issue.

Forest Service officials shirked their duty to review the company’s long-expired permit by conducting numerous meetings about what was needed t0 initiate necessary procedures — but never once followed through with a single proposition to completion. Even the basic legality of allowing a private company to use federal land for the extraction and bottling of water for profitable sale was once called into question by several officials.

Letters, emails, and meeting notes clearly mark a number of instances where the review process and various studies of the environmental impact from continued collection of the spring water were initiated between 1999 and 2003 — but not followed up by any action. In fact, nothing in these documents offers definitive answers for the inexplicable lack of action on every aspect of the Arrowhead permit. Forest Service officials have given plenty of excuses — citing everything from a tight budget to limited staffing — for the reason other concerns were given priority.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Peddling the Corruption of Liberty

August 14, 2015

Peddling the Corruption of Liberty

Liberty’s Detractors

Ever since the idea of individual liberty has achieved some measure of credibility over the world, those who would be unseated by its limited triumph had to find some way to discredit it or trump it somehow. One way was to re-christen servitude, to make it appear like an even more important kind of liberty than what individual liberty, properly understood, amounts to.

805 Puppets and puppeteers…
Photo credit: Kikkerdirk / Fotolia

When a human being is free in the most important, political sense, he or she is sovereign. This means he or she governs his or her own life—others must refrain from intruding on this life, plain and simple. That life may be fortunate or not, rich or not, beautiful or not, and many other things or not, but what matters is that that life is no one else’s to mess with. One gets to run it, no one else does.

Now this is a very uncomfortable idea for all those folks who see all kinds of benefits from running other people’s lives. But they cannot champion this now in so many words, what with individual liberty having gained solid standing, so the only way to remedy matters for them is to claim that their oppression brings even greater freedom to people than the respect and protection of individual liberty.

The Ruse of “Positive” Freedoms

So, we have the kind of “freedoms” propounded by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the freedoms now dubbed “positive.” These freedoms do not get rid of those who would use you, interfere with you, invade your life, rob, kill, or assault you but promise, to the contrary, to take good care of you without your having to do much by invading others, by violating their individual liberties.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

BC’s Gas Export Hopes Face ‘Scandal that Ate Malaysia’

July 24, 2015

BC’s Gas Export Hopes Face ‘Scandal that Ate Malaysia’

Asian nation’s PM, key to $36 billion LNG bid by Petronas, in corruption probe.

The prime minister of Malaysia, who is central to British Columbia’s liquefied natural gas development ambitions, is the subject of a major financial corruption scandal rocking his country.

Earlier this month The Wall Street Journal, citing documents from government probes, reported that investigators suspected that almost $700 million in cash had been wired through state agencies, banks, and companies linked to 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

The company is a state-owned development vehicle chaired by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who also serves as the country’s treasury minister.

Investigators believe the $700 million eventually found its way into Najib’s personal accounts and served as a slush fund for the last election. Malaysia has few rules on campaign donations or election spending.

Najib is the top authority overseeing Malaysia’s state-owned oil company Petronas, whose massive potential investment in B.C. liquefied natural gas (LNG) was greenlit by the provincial legislature earlier this month.

Now, The Australian and other news sources are saying reports of corruption have paralyzed the Malaysian government. “The scandal that ate Malaysia” is how U.S. business news agency Bloomberg is dubbing the financial brouhaha.

The debacle threatens to undermine the nation’s economy, according to an expert writing for East Asia Forum: “Malaysia’s international credibility is on the line, as is its currency, access to foreign capital and future economic prosperity.”

To date a task force investigating the 1MDB allegations has already frozen half a dozen bank accounts in Malaysia.

Petronas key to Clark’s LNG ambitions

In May of 2014, Premier Christy Clarksat for a photograph with Najib, central to any deal she sought with Petronas. The meeting was part of an eight-day trip to Malaysia and Hong Kong to promote LNG development after Clark made election campaign promises that LNG would create 100,000 jobs and erase the province’s debt.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Fascist Capitalism Functions: The Case of Greece

July 12, 2015

How Fascist Capitalism Functions: The Case of Greece

There is democratic capitalism, and there is fascist capitalism. What we have today is fascist capitalism; and the following will explain how it works, using as an example the case of Greece.

Mark Whitehouse at Bloomberg headlined on 27 June 2015, “If Greece Defaults, Europe’s Taxpayers Lose,” and presented his ‘news’ report, which simply assumed that, perhaps someday, Greece will be able to get out of debt without defaulting on it. Other than his unfounded assumption there (which assumption is even in his headline), his report was accurate. Here is what he reported that’s accurate:

He presented two graphs, the first of which shows Greece’s governmental debt to private investors (bondholders) as of, first, December 2009; and, then, five years later, December 2014. This graph shows that, in almost all countries, private investors either eliminated or steeply reduced their holdings of Greek government bonds during that 5-year period. (Overall, it was reduced by 83%; but, in countries such as France, Portugal, Ireland, Austria, and Belgium, it was reduced closer to 100% — all of it.) In other words: by the time of December 2009, word was out, amongst the aristocracy, that only suckers would want to buy it from them, so they needed suckers and took advantage of the system that the aristocracy had set up for governments to buy aristocrats’ bad bets — for governments to be suckers when private individuals won’t. Not all of it was sold directly to governments; much of it went instead indirectly, to agencies that the aristocracy has set up as basically transfer-agencies for passing junk to governments; in other words, as middlemen, to transfer unpayable debt-obligations to various governments’ taxpayers.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Wikipedia as Propaganda Not History — MH17 as An Example

July 9, 2015

Wikipedia as Propaganda Not History — MH17 as An Example

Wikipedia articles are more propaganda than they are historical accounts. And, often, their cited sources are misleading, or even false.

On 15 August 2007, the BBC headlined “Wikipedia Shows CIA Page Edits,” and Jonathan Fildes reported that, “An online tool that claims to reveal the identity of organizations that edit Wikipedia pages has revealed that the CIA was involved in editing entries.” I.e.: What the CIA doesn’t like, they can (and do) eliminate or change.

More recently, on 25 June 2015, an anonymous reddit poster, “moose,” listed and linked directly to 18 different news reports, in such media as New York Times, Washington Post, Telegraph, Mirror, Guardian, and Newsweek, reporting about wikipedia edits that were supplied not only by the CIA but by other U.S. Government offices, and by large corporations. That person opened with a news report which implicated Wikipedia itself, “Wikipedia honcho caught in scandal quits, defends paid edits,” in which Wikipedia’s own corruption was discussed. Most of the other news reports there concerned unpaid edits by employees at CIA, congressional and British parliamentary offices, the DCRI (French equivalent of the U.S. CIA), large corporations, self-interested individuals, and others. One article even concerned a report that, “All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) changed a Russian language version of a page listing civil aviation accidents to say that ‘The plane [flight MH17] was shot down by Ukrainian soldiers’.” Basically, wikipedia has been revealed to be a river of ‘information’ that’s polluted by so many self-interested sources as to be no more reliable than, say: “New York Times, Washington Post, Telegraph, Mirror, Guardian, and Newsweek.”

And that’s not reliable at all. For example, everybody knew in 2002 and 2003 that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling WMD “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” because they had read it in such ‘news’ sources as that. Consequently, even when wikipedia links to those sorts of articles, it can be propagating lies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Greece Caves, Formally Requests ESM Bailout: Full Headline And Next Steps Summary

July 8, 2015

Greece Caves, Formally Requests ESM Bailout: Full Headline And Next Steps Summary

As we reported yesterday, following the latest European leaders summit, Greece was given until the end of the week to come up with a proposal for sweeping reforms in return for loans that will keep the country from crashing out of Europe’s currency bloc and into economic ruin.

“The stark reality is that we have only five days left … Until now I have avoided talking about deadlines, but tonight I have to say loud and clear that the final deadline ends this week,” European Council President Donald Tusk told a news conference.

It did that moments ago when Greece officially submitted a request for a three-year loan facility from the European Stability Mechanism. And to think Syriza’s main election promise was no more bailouts…

As Bloomberg reports, the loan will be used to meet Greece’s debt obligations, and to ensure financial system stability. Greece proposed immediate implementation of measures, including tax, pension reforms as early as next week. Govt to detail its proposals for specific reform agenda on July 9 at latest or tomorrow.

More details from the WSJ:

Greece formally requested a three-year bailout from the eurozone’s rescue fund Wednesday and pledged to start implementing some of the overhauls demanded by creditors by early next week, according to a copy of the request seen by The Wall Street Journal.

Crucially for Greece’s creditors, the letter says the government would start implementing some measures, including on taxation and pensions, by the beginning of next week, though it doesn’t go into details.

The letter is a first step toward fulfilling a demand by international creditors, who have given Athens until Sunday to come up with tougher measures they would impose in return for desperately needed financing that could keep the country from bankruptcy and even worse economic turmoil.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

U.S. Wealth-Concentration: The Most-Accurate Current Estimates

July 8, 2015

U.S. Wealth-Concentration: The Most-Accurate Current Estimates

CURRENT REALITIES:

Wealthiest Tenth (10%) of Americans Own 75% of America; They Draw 40% of All U.S. Income.

Wealthiest Hundredth (1%) of Americans Own 43% of America; They Draw 20% of All U.S. Income.

Wealthiest Thousandth (0.1%) of Americans Own 22% of America; They Draw 8% of All U.S. Income.

Wealthiest Ten-Thousandth (0.01%) Own 11.2% of America; They Draw 5% of All U.S. Income.

Wealthiest 0.0025% (Forbes 400) Own 2.75% (of all trackable privately-held wealth, not including ‘non-profits’ that are controlled by them).

That last (2.75%) is this $2.29 trillion divided by this $83,296 billion (representing all of the privately owned wealth in the U.S.), in the final quarter of 2014.

Incidentally, the wealthiest tenth are worth over $1 million and draw incomes above $200,000; so: they’re all “millionaires” in common parlance; all of the “top 10%” are.

Following will be mirror-images of the above-cited breakdowns:

Poorest 90% of Americans Own 25% of America; They Draw 60% of All U.S. Income.

Poorest 99% of Americans Own 57% of America; They Draw 80% of All U.S. Income.

Poorest 99.9% of Americans Own 78% of America; They Draw 92% of All U.S. Income.

Poorest 99.99% of Americans Own Less Than 88.8% of America; They Draw Less Than 95% of All U.S. Income.

Poorer 50%: Comprehensive figures for the wealthier and poorer 50% of Americans haven’t been published as recently. However, for the year 2010, the wealthier 50% of Americans owned 98.9% of America, and the poorer 50% of Americans owned 1.1% of America. That was the year after the crash had supposedly ended in 2009. The last prior year in that same study was 2007, the economic peak, and it showed the wealthier half owning 97.5% of America, and the poorer half owning 2.5% of it. In other words: the losses from the Wall Street economic crash went overwhelmingly to the poorer half of the U.S. population (their wealth going down from 2.5% to only 1.1% of America’s total), because of the bailouts to Wall Street.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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