Statistics about U.S. economy almost too crazy to believe:
- Obama administration projects federal budget deficit will be $1,650,000,000,000 this year. Republicans and Democrats fight over budget cuts. Republicans proposing to cut the deficit by 1.59%. Democrats want it cut 0.86%.
- Estimated total U.S. government debt will grow by 42% by 2015
- U.S. economy actually grew more from 1930 to 1940 than during the past decade..
- Over last decade, number of Americans without health insurance rose from 38 million to 52 million.
- Agricultural commodities are soaring, price of corn has more than doubled over last 12 months. Corn is in thousands of our food products, this is a VERY frightening statistic. Rising food prices are an extremely serious issue throughout the entire world.
- Between 1999 and 2009, real median household income in the United States declined by 5.0%.
- Average American spends nearly a quarter of their income on food and gas... other parts of the world, it's almost, if not all of their income going for food.
- Average U.S. household will spend $700 more on gasoline in 2011 than 2010.
- Almost 25% of U.S. households now have zero net worth or negative net worth. In 2007, it was just 18.6%.As this figure grows, as it most surely will, more and more people have NOTHING to fall back on as times get even tougher.
- Cost of the first week of attacks on Libya was 600 million dollars.
- For the first time ever, OPEC will bring in over a trillion dollars from exporting oil this year, biggest customer is the United States.
- China produced 19.8% of all goods consumed in the world last year. US only 19.4%.
- US lost 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the WTO in 2001.
- U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
- U.S. home values have fallen 6.3 trillion dollars since the peak of the real estate market in 2005... as hard as it is to believe, it will probably get even worse, as values fall even further.
- One out of every 45 U.S. households was hit with a foreclosure filing in 2010.
- Number of homes actually repossessed reached the 1 million mark for the first time ever in 2010.
- New home sales set a brand new all-time record low in the month of February.
- Home sales in the US are down 80% from the peak in July 2005.
- American families financial condition continues to deteriorate rapidly. In 2010, one out of every eight families had at least one family member that was unemployed, highest since Labor Department began keeping track back in 1994.
- More than 6 million have given up looking for work completely.
- Average length of unemployment in the U.S. is now an all-time record 39 weeks.
- Americans now owe $900 billion in student loans, also an all-time high.
- Average household debt in the US is 136% of average household income.
- Between 2007 and 2009 median household net worth in the US fell by 23%.
- Median household debt in the US has risen to $75,600.
- Purchasing power of dollar declined from $1.00 in 1913 to 4.6 cents in 2009...(unreal). Sadly, the Federal Reserve is working very hard to get rid of the little bit of purchasing power that the U.S. dollar has left.
- From 2000 to 2008, the people running the top 14 US financial institutions received cash compensation... (salary, bonus, and the value of stock sold)... of approx. $2.6 BILLION DOLLARS!! "Of this amount, around $2 billion was received by the five best-paid individuals, who were also central to creating the highly risky asset structures that brought the financial system to the edge of the abyss: Sandy Weil (built Citigroup, which blew up shortly after he left); Hank Paulson (greatly expanded Goldman Sachs, lobbied for allowing more leverage in investment banks, then moved to the US Treasury and helped save them); Angelo Mozilo (built Countrywide, a central player in irresponsible mortgage lending); Dick Fuld (ran Lehman Brothers into the ground); and Jimmy Cayne (ran Bear Stearns into the ground)."
