If this depression is egalitarian, I’m Lloyd Blankfein!

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Robert Samuelson sez this depression recession is “egalitarian.”

It has been the most egalitarian of all the 11 recessions since World War II.  In various ways, it has touched every social class through job loss, pay cuts, depressed home values, shrunken stock portfolios, eroded retirement savings, grown children returning home-and anxiety about all of the above.

This graph of unemployment by income level sure the fuck doesn’t look “egalitarian:”

And the Plunge Protection Team is doing is damnedest to keep up appearances on the Down Jones Industrial Average, which is hardly egalitarian, especially when they are using your money, regardless of whether you have anything to gain from it, to do it!

In what universe is bailing out banks and stocks and mortgages (using everyone’s money) but not unemployment insurance “egalitarian?”  How many banksters are on food stamps?  How many of their children are food or shelter insecure?  Why am I paying my neighbor’s mortgage, and bailing out their equities and 401k’s, both of which are destined to crash anyway?

Newsweek is worse than “useless stenographers,” because by protraying this depression as “egalitarian,” they are covering-up the real crimes, the biggest fraud in history, over which the ruling elites preside at center-court.

But Samuelson’s certainly right that that by now the recession has touched an unnerving majority of society:

A new study from the Pew Research Center, based on an opinion survey in May of nearly 3,000 Americans and an exhaustive evaluation of economic data, provides a preview. Not surprisingly, it confirms that Americans have become more frugal; 71 percent say they’re buying less expensive brands, 57 percent say they’ve trimmed or eliminated vacations. Life plans have changed; 11 percent say they’ve postponed marriage or children, while 9 percent have moved in with parents.

Not even Samuelson believes his own damned thesis that the pain has been spread evenly across demographics:

Previous recessions have focused their hurt on the young and unskilled. This remains true. Almost one fifth of workers 16 to 24 were unemployed at the end of 2009, a near doubling since late 2007. Among those without a high-school diploma, joblessness was 50 percent higher than the average. Still, the economic and spiritual damage extends much further, for many reasons.

Here he talks about perceptions, but look at the friggin’ “egalitarian” numbers!

One paradox identified by Pew is that some groups that “have been hardest hit by this recession (including blacks, young adults and Democrats) are significantly more upbeat than their more sheltered counterparts (including whites, older adults and Republicans) about a recovery.” For instance: blacks suffer much higher unemployment than whites (15.4 percent vs. 8.6 percent in June) but believe more strongly than whites that recovery has begun (47 percent to 38 percent). Pew’s explanation for this is politics. With a Democratic administration, Democrats are more upbeat and Republicans are more glum.

This nominal “Democrat” is pretty unimpressed and pitchfork-angry about the current Democratic administration.

What Samuelson really means by “egalitarian” is that fuck the poor this depression recession has gone further “upscale” than most upscale folks expected:

Another theory-more powerful, I think-is that the Great Recession, though jarring to almost everyone, was most disruptive and disillusioning to those who previously were the most protected. It punctured their cocoons so unexpectedly that they became more cautious and fearful, whereas those who even in good times faced job loss and income shifts (many blacks, the young and the poor) were less surprised and affected. One legacy of the Great Recession is that insecurity and uncertainty have gone upscale. People feel more exposed. They tend to plan for the worst rather than hope for the best. Their reluctance to make major purchase commitments (a new car or home) validates their pessimism by retarding recovery.

While everyone else, including the “upscale,” have been increasingly hammered economically, guess what has happened to the filthy rich High Net Worth Individuals worldwide, including North America?  The transnationalist lugals are back in black, growing in wealth and numbers, even as world GDP sinks like a rock.

What the fuck is going on?  It’s this simple: