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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GST who wrote (76781)	12/28/2006 9:05:08 AM
From: andiron	Respond to of 110194

mostly correct...but younger yuppy generation (very small #) in india has hocked themselves w/ new gizmos. Credit is running wild. And assets soaring skyhigh.

To: GST who wrote (76781)	12/28/2006 1:16:18 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 110194

The population today knows little of the experience of poverty -- except of course for the chronically poor that America has mostly discarded According to the University of Michigan study which tracked the fortunes of individuals over time, 3 out of 10 of those in the lowest quintile of earners made it to the top 20 percent of earners between 1975 and 1991. More than three quarters found their way into the top two quintiles and less than 1% of those in the bottom 20% remained there over the length of the study, 15 years. The rich have experience with being poor. Poverty, for those who are willing and able to work, is largely a transitory state. Where it becomes endemic is for those who through disability or choice receive a lifetime of government assistance. The government assistance programs set up as a reaction to the Great Depression and expanded in LBJ's Great Society suckered a section of society into a lifetime of poverty, they produced the exact opposite of their intent. Those who lived through the Great Depression are much more likely to be savers as well as adverse to risk but that doesn't mean they did better than those who are risk takers (high levels of investment with a low savings rate). The collective performance of risk takers will almost always outrun the risk avoiders even when you account for the large number of failures. Besides, you are ignoring the obvious, that being cash flow oriented hasn't hurt the collective balance sheets of Americans much in that total household net worth grew 2.5 trillion in the preceding year, easily dwarfing the growth in deficit you worry so much about.