From DSC:
This posting is especially meant for two audiences (but also has wider ramifications for the vast majority of us living in the United States)
- Those students who are majoring in economics
- Those of us working within higher education
To the students studying economics out there:
- What parts from the articles listed below are true? False? Is anything being minimized or exaggerated — or is the information factual and accurate?
- How are the topics of these articles/discussions relevant to your lives today? In the future?.
- Do ethics come into play here? If so, how?
.
Fed to the Sharks, Part 2: Housing & the Death of the Middle Class — from oftwominds.com by Charles Hugh Smith
Excerpts:
The Fed sacrificed the foundation of middle class wealth — stable housing values — to boost bank profits.
Lest you think the phrase “death of the middle class” is hyperbole, please examine these two charts, keeping in mind the middle class by definition must be in the middle of income/wealth distribution — conventionally, between 40% and 80%, i.e. the 40% between the bottom 40% and the top 20%.
See that little red wedge?
That’s the bottom 80% — the entire middle class
and everyone below the middle class.
Fed to the Sharks, Part 1: The Fed takes our money, gives it to banks who loan it back to us at 16% — from oftwominds.com by Charles Hugh Smith
Excerpt:
We’re being Fed to the sharks, every day, one morsel at a time. What a way to go….
What can we say about the Federal Reserve’s policies that hasn’t been said a million times? How about simplifying the two primary purposes of Fed policies? I will cover one today and the second one tomorrow. Both involve feeding the 99.5% to the financier/ Wall Street/bank sharks.
To institutions of higher education:
- If what Charles Hugh Smith is saying is true and the middle class continues to be hollowed out, how does — or should — this affect us?
- How might this impact our strategies? Our offerings? Our pricing structures?