Enjoy our new video, "Three Presidents," which addresses alarming and sobering similarities between Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and Kennedy -- and which may explain why they were all three assassinated.
Last Updated on Wednesday, 01 September 2010 09:31
U.S. Economy Is Increasingly Tied to the Rich
Written by Robert Frank
Monday, 09 August 2010 13:09
Who cares how the rich spend their money?
Well, perhaps everyone should these days. Consumer spending accounts for roughly two-thirds of U.S. gross domestic product, or the value of all goods and services produced in the nation. And spending by the rich now accounts for the largest share of consumer outlays in at least 20 years.
According to new research from Moody's Analytics, the top 5% of Americans by income account for 37% of all consumer outlays. Outlays include consumer spending, interest payments on installment debt and transfer payments.
By contrast, the bottom 80% by income account for 39.5% of all consumer outlays.
It is no surprise, of course, that the rich spend so much, since they earn a disproportionate share of income. According to economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, the top 10% of earners captured about half of all income as of 2007.
What is surprising is just how much or our consumer economy is now dependent on the rich, and how that share has increased as the U.S. emerges from recession. In the third quarter of 1990, the top 5% accounted for 25% of consumer outlays. That held relatively steady until the mid-1990s, when it started inching up past 30%. It dipped in 2003 and again in 2008, but started surging in 2009 amid the greatest bull market rally in history, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising nearly 50% in the last nine months of the year.
Fire alarm system on Deepwater Horizon intentionally disabled before Gulf spill
Written by Editor
Friday, 23 July 2010 11:47
The fire alarm system on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig was disabled prior to the catastrophic explosion that caused the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a rig worker said Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The rig's chief electronics technician told a federal panel Friday that the Horizon's fire alarm system and indicator light were deliberately set in "inhibited" mode so the alarms would not wake up sleeping rig workers in the middle of the night.
Michael Williams told the panel that he believed the alarms had been inhibited for over a year before the disaster, a decision made by leadership aboard the rig, the Washington Post reported.
The April 20 explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 people and unleashed one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.
The disabling of the alarm system was not unique -- federal records show that rig operators have paid frequent fines for bypassing safety systems that interfere with routine operations aboard, the Post reported.
Williams, a retired Marine, survived the fire by jumping from the burning rig into the Gulf of Mexico.
Louisiana Sen. David Vitter on Sunday warned that the Obama administration's offshore drilling moratorium could end up costing more jobs than the BP oil spill.
The Republican senator, one of several local officials who's been outspoken in opposition to the suspension on Gulf drilling, told "Fox News Sunday" that 140,000 jobs or more are on the line as the administration continues to fight for a six-month drilling ban.
The Obama administration last week issued a revised plan to halt deep-water offshore drilling after a federal appeals court struck down the original six-month moratorium. The administration claims it needs time to review safety measures to ensure there are no more disasters like the deadly Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that triggered the BP leak on April 20.
But industry officials and Gulf Coast lawmakers say local workers can't take that kind of hit and that by the time the ban is over, some companies will have moved their business overseas.
BP said the cost of cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill - the biggest in US history - has risen to around $3.5bn.
The announcement about rising costs came as engineers worked to replace a cap over the well that ruptured a mile below the surface following an explosion on April 20 that killed 11 workers and sank the Deepwater Horizon rig.
More than 52,000 payments have been made out of 105,000 claims, totalling almost $165m.
Engineers are taking advantage of fine weather to install a new system - or 'Top Hat' - with the potential to capture all the leaking crude as it continue to drill relief wells.
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