Social Issues

As discussed earlier, Jamie Dimon's annual letter this year was a departure from his usual optimistic sermons about the state of nation, dedicating an entire section in the 45 page letter to  describe that "something is wrong" with the US. And of all the items mentions, the following aspect of the US economy is what was most troubling to the JPM CEO. Not surprisingly, it deals with two of the biggest threats facing the US currently: demographics and labor, and shows the at least in one key economic metric, the US is now the worst among the entire universe of developed countries.

Despite Obama's promise of a socialist utopia whereby all of his snowflake, millennial supporters would jump at the opportunity to 'spread their wealth around' for the greater good, his one crowning achievement that attempted to implement that vision, Obamacare, has proven to be a complete failure.  As it turns out, while millennials may be naive, they're not stupid. 

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings has finally reached his maximum willingness to throw taxpayer dollars at the Dallas Police and Fire Pension (DPFP) system and has pulled is support for a bill that, if it passes, will undoubtedly prove to be yet another futile effort to save the system from insolvency.  Despite support for the original legislation introduced by Dan Flynn, chair of the pensions committee in the Texas House of Representatives, Rawlings apparently took issue with a last minute addition to the bill that would have taxpayers fund the pensions of "phantom employees" based on a t

Something unexpected happened on the road to Obama's economic "recovery" - according to Gallup, over the past two years, a record two-thirds, or an average of 67% of lower-income U.S. adults, up from 51% from 2010-2011, have worried "a great deal" about the problem of hunger and homelessness in the country. They are not alone: concern has also increased among middle- and upper-income Americans, but they still worry far less than do lower-income Americans.

Authored by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,

Those who lost out on the Fed’s “wealth effect.”

Here’s a mystery: Has this “wealth-effect” economy that the Fed so beautifully engineered since the Financial Crisis gotten a lot riskier, scarier, and uglier in some profound ways for lower-income Americans, those making $30,000 or less a year?

One of the questions that Gallup posed was this: