Wall Street doesn’t hurt when Main Street bleeds

[JBeukema]

The economy shows few signs of vigor. Economic growth is anemic and official unemployment is stuck at 10 percent. Wages are in a rut, but employers, still not satisfied with their bottom line (are they ever?), are insisting on concessions from their employees.
Consumer spending is stalled as millions of people struggle to pay down their accumulated debt. Home sales and prices continue to fall, while foreclosures are increasing, thanks in no small measure to the refusal of banks to renegotiate mortgage terms.
Export markets aren't much help either. And little change is expected, even if the dollar slides in value compared to other currencies, for the simple reason that world economic growth remains slow too.
In contrast to the previous two global slowdowns, no bubbles are on the horizon and no country has the capacity to reinvigorate the world economy as the U.S. - mainly by means of speculative bubbles and unsustainable debt - did in the 1990s and most of this decade.
Meanwhile, the top 1 percent of Americans who account for almost 40 percent of all wealth are doing quite well, and the top corporate elites are sitting on $2 trillion of cash, which they only dip into to chase speculative investment opportunities abroad.
What makes this seemingly intractable situation worse is that the government's traditional anti-cyclical tools - fiscal and monetary policy - are ineffective, but for different reasons.

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[uscitizen]

Yep, been saying for years that the myth of if it is good for Wall Street it is good for America is just wall Street sycophant propoganda.

 

[Revere]

Would "Main Street" feel better if "Wall Street" was hurting?

 

[uscitizen]

The main difference in this recession is the massive bleeding of jobs to offshore.
The old rules and fixes no longer fully apply. But the experts can't seem to figure that out and keep trying the same old things.

 

[Toro]

Wall Street takes enormous risk make enormous money. The financial system collapses causing unemployment to skyrocket. The government bails out Wall Street with taxpayer money, barely asking for anything in return. Wall Street goes back to making enormous amounts of money. Unemployment stays high.

Sounds fair to me.