Image of the Day

On the eleventh day a creditor gave me a bill for ELEVEN trillion
dollars [23] of debt incurred by the American consumer, including
mortgages, student loans, and credit card liabilities.
And on the twelfth day Santa gave me an IOU for TWELVE trillion
dollars [24], the U.S. share [25] of up to $32 trillion [26] held overseas,
untaxed. "One problem," cautioned Santa, "my reindeer haven't been able
to find any of it yet."w
After all this I stood perplexed. "What does it all mean?" I asked
Santa.
"Well, that's capitalism," I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight.
"It's all about the individual getting all he can, because that will benefit
everyone. And let me tell you," he added with a twinkle, "those benefits
are just as real as I am!"
Quote of the Day:
A study conducted by Edward N. Wolff for the Levy
Economics Institute of Bard College in March 2010 made
the following findings:
‘The richest 1 percent received over one-third of the
total gain in marketable wealth over the period from 1983 to
2007. The next 4 percent also received about a third of the
total gain and the next 15 percent about a fifth, so that the
top quintile collectively accounted for 89 percent of the total
growth in wealth, while the bottom 80 percent accounted for
11 percent.
Debt was the most evenly distributed component of
household wealth, with the bottom 90 percent of households
responsible for 73 percent of total indebtedness.
Wealth concentration in too few hands while the general
populace is saddled with too much debt to buy the goods and
services produced by the corporations, is a replay of the
conditions leading to the crash of 1929 and the ensuing