Broke in America: The Housing Meltdown Continues

03/30/11 Los Angeles, California – She likes the free, fresh wind in her hair
Life without care
She’s broke, and it’s “oke”
Hates California, it’s cold and it’s damp
That’s why the lady is a tramp

Well, it’s not cold and it’s not damp. Instead, LA is warm and sunny, with springtime flowers popping out all over.

And yesterday, the Dow rose 81 points, while the price of gold slipped a little.

So what else is new?

We never thought we liked LA. But we may change our mind. Daughter Maria took us around yesterday. We wandered around Venice Beach and then through Hollywood. The town is much nicer than we remembered it. Many of the houses, shops and apartment buildings are getting a makeover. They remind us of the Soho area of Buenos Aires – young, hip, and lively.

“This isn’t like the rest of America,” Maria explained. “Just drive an hour to the East and you’ll see what we mean. That’s the real America. Here, the town is full of immigrants…pretty girls who want to hit it big in Hollywood…Russians, French, English…all sorts of girls. And there are a lot of men…you know, men who take a little too much care of themselves. You see them at parties. They also have a project. They always have contacts. They always have a cell phone and spend a lot of time talking. But nothing ever happens.

“But I love LA. I don’t know if I could live anywhere else.”

There are a lot of girls with the fresh wind in their hair here…

And a lot of people who are broke. Whether it is “oke” or not…we don’t know.

But here’s the latest on America’s housing meltdown:

AP – Damage from the housing bust is spreading to areas once thought to be immune.

In at least 14 major US metro areas, prices have fallen to 2003 levels – when the housing bubble was just starting to inflate. Prices will likely drop further this year, making many people reluctant to buy or sell. That would push down sales and prices more.

The depressed housing industry is slowing an economy that has shown strength elsewhere. And it’s starting to hurt those who bought years before the housing boom began. In some cities, people who have paid their mortgages for a decade have little or no home equity.

Prices have tumbled in familiar troubled spots, such as Las Vegas, Cleveland and Detroit. But they’re also at or near 10-year lows in Denver, Atlanta, Chicago and Minneapolis – cities that weren’t as swept up in the housing boom and bust.

“It’s been tough on the lower class but it’s filtering up,” said Paul Dales, senior US economist with Capital Economics. “It may be only a matter of time before it hits the wealthy.”

Just about the only major market weathering the second wave of the housing downturn is Washington. Home prices there have risen 11 percent in the past two years.

A Daily Reckoning note: the zombies are doing just fine, thank you. It’s the rest of the nation that suffers. Money flows from the people who earn it to the protected financial sector…and to the feds themselves. Is it any wonder that profits in finance are back to their 2007 level? Or that, overall, debt is now even higher? Or that people in the zombie capital are actually richer today (thanks to automatic wage hikes in the federal government, plus property value increases)?

But people in LA? In Chicago? In Dubuque or Baton Rouge?

They’re broke.

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning

Since founding Agora Inc. in 1979, Bill Bonner has found success and garnered camaraderie in numerous communities and industries. A man of many talents, his entrepreneurial savvy, unique writings, philanthropic undertakings, and preservationist activities have all been recognized and awarded by some of America's most respected authorities. Along with Addison Wiggin, his friend and colleague, Bill has written two New York Times best-selling books, Financial Reckoning Day and Empire of Debt. Both works have been critically acclaimed internationally. With political journalist Lila Rajiva, he wrote his third New York Times best-selling book, Mobs, Messiahs and Markets, which offers concrete advice on how to avoid the public spectacle of modern finance. Since 1999, Bill has been a daily contributor and the driving force behind The Daily Reckoning . 

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Broke And Getting Broker: 22 Jaw Dropping Statistics About The Financial Condition Of American Families

Most American families are really struggling in this economy and they see most of the families around them really struggling, but they don't have any hard numbers to back up the feelings of economic despair that they are experiencing.  Well, below you will find 22 statistics that prove that American families are broke and getting broker.  Today, the financial condition of most middle class families is rapidly deteriorating.  The number of good jobs is declining, incomes are down, debt loads are up and bankruptcies and foreclosures just continue to increase.  If you step back and really examine the statistics, it becomes really hard to deny that American families are getting poorer.  Well, the wealthiest 5 percent are still thriving, but everyone else is really having a tough time.  The truth is that a large percentage of the U.S. middle class is slowly but surely going broke.  Unfortunately, this is being caused by long-term economic trends that simply are not going to be fixed overnight.

Most Americans had just assumed that the United States would always have a dominant, prosperous economy.  But in the world we live in today there are no guarantees.

The era when almost anyone could find a good job is over.  Millions of good jobs have already left the United States, and vast numbers of legal and illegal workers have been shipped in to the country to compete for the jobs that are still here.

There are millions of Americans that would give just about anything for a good job right about now.  But the good jobs are very few and far between at this point.

Every day there is more depressing news.  For example, a recent job fair in Massachusetts was shut down because of a lack of jobs.

In fact, with jobs so scarce these days, more Americans than ever are willing to work for free.

This is not just a "recession" or an "economic downturn".  The U.S. economy is fundamentally changing for the worse.  Millions of American families are already experiencing economic despair and millions more will be experiencing it very soon.

The following are 22 jaw dropping statistics about the financial condition of American families....

#1 In 2010, one out of every eight American families had at least one family member that was unemployed.  In fact, the figure for 2010 was the highest it has been since the U.S. Labor Department began keeping track of this statistic back in 1994.

#2 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 8 million Americans are working part-time jobs because they can't get full-time jobs.

#3 There are now more than 6 million Americans that the government says have given up looking for work completely.

#4 After accounting for inflation, the average income for an American family has fallen 5 percent since the year 2000.

#5 According to the New York Times, as of 2009 the wealthiest 5 percent of all Americans had 63.5 percent of all the wealth in America.  Meanwhile, the bottom 80 percent had just 12.8 percent of all the wealth.

#6 During this most recent economic downturn, employee compensation in the United States has been the lowest that it has been relative to gross domestic product in over 50 years.

#7 According to the Federal Reserve, between 2007 and 2009 median household net worth in the United States fell by 23 percent.

#8 The Federal Reserve also says that median household debt in the United States has risen to $75,600.

#9 Total U.S. credit card debt is more than 8 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.

#10 Today, 46% of all Americans carry a credit card balance from month to month.

#11 Of U.S. households that have credit card debt, the average amount owed on credit cards is $15,788.

#12 Americans now owe more than $887 billion on student loans, which is even more than they owe on credit cards.

#13 A staggering 25 percent of all American adults now have a credit score below 599.

#14 When you adjust wages for inflation, middle class workers in the United States make less money today than they did back in 1971.

#15 American workers that are unemployed are nearly twice as likely to have been told by a doctor or a nurse that they suffer from depression.

#16 In 2010, for the first time ever more than a million U.S. families lost their homes to foreclosure, and that number is expected to go even higher in 2011.

#17 According to RealtyTrac, one out of every 45 U.S. households was hit with a foreclosure filing in 2010.

#18 U.S. home values have fallen an astounding 6.3 trillion dollars since the peak of the real estate market.  Most of that pain has been felt by ordinary American families.

#19 Approximately half of all American workers make $25,000 a year or less.

#20 According to a survey released very close to the end of 2010, 55 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck.

#21 1.5 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2010.  That represented the fourth yearly increase in bankruptcy filings in a row.

#22 As 2007 began, only about 26 million Americans were on food stamps, but today over 44 million Americans are on food stamps which is an all-time record high.




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