Note to the Vanishing Middle Class: Hang on to your cash for the coming crash.
No one knows for certain if the market will continue spiraling upwards or return to Mother Earth. But there are certainly ominous signs.
1) A high profile stock market guru recommended an over-the-counter (pink sheet) stock for his best pick of 2011 – With all the blue chips and NASDAQ winners to choose from, he couldn’t find one to recommend as his top choice. Naturally, when the market opened the next day, the cheap stock went zooming skyward – with a 30 percent gain on the open. Wonder of wonders. His prediction is already coming true.
2) Remember Goldman Sachs? The same company we talked about many shows ago – the one that took bailout money when they didn’t need it at 0 interest. Well, now their using the proceeds to invest over 300 million in Facebook. Facebook is currently early small change (roughly 200 million, though it could be 2 million just as easily). However, Goldman’s touting the valuation at 50 billion dollars – bigger than some small countries. Can you hear a bubble popping? Goldman DECLARE such a hyped evaluation, and it instantly comes to pass.
Meanwhile, a JP Morgan executive is joining the White House as Chief of Staff. The Obama/Bush team is at it again. I can’t wait for someone to write the movie script and call it fiction. Now we can better understand why George W. Bush never had a bad word to say about Obama, and why dad George Bush Senior recently called him a “great guy.” What’s not to love?
The stock market crash of 2008 was a timely tactic – a smoke screen – making it easy for corporations to fire workers on the premise that the economy was sinking. As a result, they streamlined operations, took businesses overseas and many received fat bailouts.
Meanwhile, the “folks” lost jobs, homes and hope. While the post 2008 stock market boom makes the rich even richer, the majority are just holding on. The upper middle class is sinking into the middle class, while the upper-upper middle class is living very well indeed.
In fact, the meaning of middle class has changed. Surveys indicate that most people believe they’re middle class. What is middle class? We previously thought of it as a level of income and education. Is a person who loses their home, income etc suddenly thrown out of the middle class? Are they classless? Or are the class-less those who rigged the game in the first place?
Pop culture is also growing classless. Lady Gaga sporting a meat purse. Sara P. killing a moose on TV. Sisters who become multi-multi millionaires based on no talent at all. In fact, that’s their claim to fame. They have no talent. Or, new books out with titles that would make your grandparents blush. TV commentators aren’t even permitted to say the name of these books on-air – so they just show the covers!
The days of class may well be behind us. How can you reclaim class in a no-class society? The class is half-empty, while pop-culture may have lost the culture in it’s pop.