Wait... you mean people actually getting smarter about their money? Hell no, the banks will recover and everyone will forget this crisis ever happened and in 30 years we'll see it all over again. Fuck, what are you smoking?

Here in the U.S. we've seen the middle class get wiped out in terms of housing equity--not just drops of $20,000 but in fact half the value or more in some locations. With mortgages universal, this means that most housing is, or has recently been, underwater. With the recent bad job market, many workers have not been able to wait out the cycle, so the middle class is losing its houses while investors are buying them up at cheap interest rates and cut-rate prices. And while we have a pension insurance plan at the national level, it only replaces a small amount of money, so if the company or agency that pays out your pension goes broke, you're out of luck.

The U.S. has seen a faster short-term economic recovery than Europe (which could be argued as yet to enter a recovery). But the effects on the structure of the U.S. economy has resulted in permanent damage to both the middle and lower class. Welfare Portugal's are being cut or under funded at the state level, blue collar and semi skilled jobs have seen a massive cut in either gross numbers or in real numbers which have made these jobs less available and those that are available pay less and have worse benefits. On the other hand the recovery of the stock market indicates that the wealth of the upper middle and upper classes has recovered.

The crises has made the structure of the U.S. economy more amenable to a growing inequality of wealth distribution.

Well, some of us took advatnage of the repressed housing market to buy our houses. My home 2 years ago cost nearly 175k. I bought it for 125k from a guy who bought it for 60k and renovated it, spending about 30k in new roof, hot water heater, furnace, A/C, plumbing, draining (sump pumps and drain pipes laid all around the basement and back of the house where the water comes down the hill we live on), interior walls (had a serious mold problem so got stripped of all sheet rock/dry wall and re "walled"), etc. He made a small profit and I got a nice house where my work is mostly taking plain jane walls or missing little personal touches (like a light I over the sink and a raised mini porch to make the step down out back easier - both of which I designed and built with my own two hands - or having the lower part of the backyard fenced in by pros) and making it a home.

Do I feel bad for the people who lost it. Kind of, but honestly, they shoudln't have gotten into a debt that put them at more than 60% of their monthly income. Of course banks shouldn't let them do that either. My house costs me less than 30% of my monthly *take home*. If people woudl live within their means and not borrow so much that they can't pay their bills off unemployment and/or kept 3 months worth of minimum living expenses int he bank (in may case, I keep 10K there just in case) then they wouldn't be in the situations they get into. In short, be responsible with your money and your money won't fail you even when a job does.

And as far as it being your job... If your married, your wife is not your property although you call her your wife. My job is my employers job that they let me do and pay me for. Remember that and adopt that attitude and you will get far in life. I don't own my wife. I don't own my clients. I don't ownt he street I live on (well, I own part as a taxc player) although I call it my street. Putting "my" in fornt of soemthing doesn't transer ownership of it to you.

Draug, I'm not talking about job as in my property, what I meant to say (and which is obvious from the context) is that a job can be (wrongly) perceived as a property, in the sense that it allows you to write future earnings on your balance sheet. It's just that that has become unstable, so these future earnings are less sure than before and the expectation value of these future earnings has gone down a little.

As I recall, the government did NOT bail out Lehman Brothers and it went bankrupt.

Sorry THM correct. "Since the collapse of Lehman."

Gotcha. But even that (as yo point out) shouldn't be perceived as property if just because jobs can go away, even in the best of times. Mismanaged companies have always laid people off and tried to recover, sometimes going under despite a booming economy (Polaroid went completely under due to mismanagement for instance and many small businesses don't make it beyond the 7 year mark because their owners won't hire a business manager or consultant who knows their stuff or they hire one then refuse to listen to them). One should never ever count on a job as always being there.

Rigorously denying (some form of) job security essentially means you're not buying a house or a car, given that you could be without money the next day. I disagree. You should compute your budget assuming some form of income, otherwise you simply have no budget whatsoever. It's just that assuming that income will be constant, or constantly growing, is what I think part of the mentality that makes people suffer more than necessary due to the crisis.

The problem isn't assuming some form of income. It is assuming your full income and not preparing by saving. Don't put all your savings into a McMansion that you can barely afford the payment on and can't afford furniture in. Instead, buy a modest home with 20% down and still have 10K in the bank. That's what we did. We put 25k down, financing just 100k and still had over 15k in the bank. I used 2500 more as the down payment on the Mercedes but *still* have 15k in the bank because I saved it up. I havenice furniture (not hyper expensive leather, but nice and comfy) in every room. Some of it, lie our bedroom furinture, is 5-10 years old (dressers, headboards, and bedframes last along time if you take care of them and all you need is new matress and box springs every 5 years, not a whole new bedroom). But people today are foolish with their money so when things go south, they are fucked by their own stupid ways.

it is fragile because that way the super rich can take wealth from the rest of society. it is fragile because the economy is centrally run. if you had a system where money creation power was distributed, where there was a free market on money creation, then there would be a lot less fragility. or if you had a system where the government had less power, it would likewise be less fragile.

iceland's coup against their puppet regime resulted in a removal of some of the centralization of power over the economy there, and the average person is keeping his job and wealth over there. unfortunately governments in other countries are much more oppressive and are enforcing the agenda.

but we are in a bit of a bind at this point. they already took so much wealth that decentralizing authority will still leave them with massive control over the country.

the government already gave away all this money. now we have no money left. right now our wealth is so concentrated due to fraud/theft etc. if we switched to a perfect free market now it would not really help the situation much.
it is like some gang goes into a town decides there are no rights to keep your property, rob every single member of the town so now the gang owns everything. after all that theft they then tell the people "ok we understand your problems so we have now decided that people can never have their property taken from them".