I inherited being middle class when my dad surprised me after his death. I feel like an endangered species, just waiting for the banks to scam me out of the whole thing.

The bottom has fallen out too many times before for me to have faith in anything financial.

However, for people who are still working, the economy is horrible. Even skilled work is seeing a race to the bottom as Americans are pitted against Indians who will work for far less on H1B visas. I don't see any recovery there, at all.

The fix is in.

Disposable incomes continue to shrink.
Median incomes continue to fall.

Sure the stock market has been pumped up with the Fed printing $1tn a year, but that's about all.

Even the recent house price rise is just an illusion.
That has been pumped up by hedge funds buying tens of thousands of properties to rent out.
The largest price rises are in the previously worst affected bubble areas in the run up to 2007.
There is obviously something of a geographical spread out from this to some other regions.

The most savvy hedge funds (those who started buying up property in 2009) are now getting out of the market.

Interest rates for new mortgages have increased from 3.3% early May to 4.5% now.
This will kill off the housing market.
Mortgage applications have already seen recent drastic falls.
The number of new homes under construction has also seen recent dramatic falls.

The vast majority of the jobs that have been created in 2013 have been poorly paid part time jobs.
The number of relatively well paid full time jobs is lower now than it was at the start of the year.

The ONLY age group that has seen a rise in labor participation rates is the over 54's.
Simply because far fewer people can afford to retire early.
Indeed the employment rates of the over 65's is increasing - they can no longer afford to retire at all.
This is further excluding younger age groups from the jobs market.
The under 25 unemployment rate is rising rapidly and we are just about to see the effect of the latest graduates from college and High School - they are going to find it very tough to find employment in the current environment.
Companies just aren't hiring.

The headlines of job number creation are being overstated by around 100,000 per month.
This is primarily due to two factors :-

the extremely high number of people that are taking on a second (or third) poorly paid part time job to try and keep body and soul together (see the recent articles about the McDonalds budget tips and employee earnings)

The large overstatement in the BLS Birth/Death model for the number of jobs in new business start ups.

If the official government inflation figures were anywhere close to reality the US would never have been out of recession since 2008.

Official GDP growth numbers have been sliding since 2011/early 2012.

The big banks are currently busy slashing their Q2 GDP growth forecasts in light of the recent economic data.
E.G. JP Morgan recently cut their forecast for Q2 GDP from 2% to 1% - other banks are doing the same.
The initial Q2 GDP estimate comes out on July 31st.

I said a few weeks ago that I expected final Q2 GDP to come in around +0.6%, when all the big banks were forecasting 2%+.

As ever only a select few of the top 1% have been any better off over the last few years.
This is primarily due to the over $2.5tn of Corporate Welfare that the government and the Federal Reserve is currently handing out to the big banks, arms companies and other large Corporations.

The 99% are considerably worse off now, than they were in 2010/2011.
They are worse off now than they were in 2009!

Welcome to DU DFJ.

There are many like me, you forget Gerrymandering, Corporate intimidation of their employees, Corporate owned Media Propaganda, outright bought and stolen elections.

We live in a Plutocracy not a democracy now. The only thing the 1% has not done is Change the the name from the United States of America to the Incorporated States of America.

What did I miss in your well composed statement, not much room for assumptions that I can see. You seem to blame the the entire middle class for voting for these assholes.

as well as their leadership as its their fault.
They keep cutting workers hours and they are paying them a wage that is in essence a 3rd world wage and if we want to see improvement for the middle class and poor we are going to have to force the CEOs for these companies to do the right thing.
How? Take the lowest paid worker for a company and compare it to the highest paid one and the bigger the gap in pay the higher taxes the company pays to uncle sam.

All the new wealth that is created goes to the top 2%. They invest in production outside the United States and bring the products back here, where we have a low minimum wage service economy.
Raise tariffs and raise the minimum wage.

First: The Dow was booming right up to the very second before the crash. It's not a reliable indicator of ANYTHING. These are the same clowns that gamed it all the first time. They're still up to the same nonsense, only now they know they will never pay because they are too big to jail, to big to break up.

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As for the housing market

Billionaire Speculators' Greed Makes Life Hard For Renters and Would-Be Homebuyers
Wealthy real estate speculators are snapping up homes with the same zeal that created the housing market bubble.
March 3, 2013 |


The foreclosure crisis in America has had many unexpected twists. But none may be as striking as the latest development: real estate speculators, with billions in ready cash, are swooping into hard-hit locales and buying foreclosed and low-end homes with the same vehemence that created the housing market bubble.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/billionaire-speculators-greed-makes-life-hard-renters-and-would-be-homebuyers
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Can Cash-Rich Investors Keep Snapping Up Homes?

Marchillo is on to something. The once-beleaguered Las Vegas housing market has been on fire since investment firms led by Blackstone Group LP, Colony Capital and American Homes 4 Rent began buying homes here some eight months ago, backed by $8 billion in investor cash to spend nationally.

These big investors and a handful of others have bought at least 55,000 single-family homes across the U.S. in the past year. In the Vegas area alone, they have accounted for at least 10 percent of the homes sold since January 2012, according to a Reuters analysis of housing transactions.

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/05/02/Can-Cash-Rich-Investors-Keep-Snapping-Up-Homes.aspx#page1

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Buying a Home? Better Get to it Before Wall Street Does

Big investors are pouring unprecedented amounts of money into real estate hard hit by the housing crash, bringing those moribund markets back to life but raising the prospect of another Wall Street-fueled bubble that won’t be sustainable.

Big investors are pouring unprecedented amounts of money into real estate hard hit by the housing crash, bringing those moribund markets back to life but raising the prospect of another Wall Street-fueled bubble that won’t be sustainable.

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/04/23/Buying-a-Home-Better-Get-to-It-Before-Wall-Street-Does.aspx#page1

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