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The End of Extend and Pretend

Have you got that sinking feeling that the election won’t make much difference and partisan solutions won’t fix the nation’s let alone the world’s severe economic problems? Well if not, you should. The shell game is almost over where governments and banks can keep shifting IOUs around to each other, pretending they can bail each other out of trouble when so many countries and their financial systems drown in red ink and can only print money to shore themselves up.

By Jonathan D. Miller | Updated on June 14, 2012

 Have you got that sinking feeling that the election won’t make much difference and partisan solutions won’t fix the nation’s let alone the world’s severe economic problems? Well if not, you should. The shell game is almost over where governments and banks can keep shifting IOUs around to each other, pretending they can bail each other out of trouble when so many countries and their financial systems drown in red ink and can only print money to shore themselves up.

Any way you look at it global standards of living are going down—and will stay there in long-term economic funk. The latest, most sobering numbers were released a few days ago showing how average family wealth has declined in the U.S. from nearly $130,000 in 2007 to under $80,000 in 2011. Not only has the decline been painfully sharp, but the average American family only has a five-figure cushion in savings and assets–$80,000 won’t take you very far when pensions are evaporating and technology continues to kill off more jobs than it creates. Of course, for most Americans wages are not increasing, and in many cases people are making (a lot) less. The top 10% continue to cream most of the gains, according to the latest statistics, but that cannot continue either when economic underpinnings rot out beneath the most affluent.

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