Rich and Poor Divide Grows - The Financial Hurricane

[mikelewis]

BBC News Reports: US wealthiest 'worth $1 trillion'
"The US's richest tycoons increased their personal wealth in the past year, with the top 400 worth $1.13 trillion (£640bn), says Forbes magazine.
To make this year's list of the top 400 fortunes in the US a minimum net worth of $900m was required - up from $750m last year. The top rankings were little changed over the past year, however the net worth of the 400 rose a combined $125m.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4276302.stm


MSNBC Reports: Poverty rate at 12.7 percent, 4th straight rise
"The nation’s poverty rate rose to 12.7 percent of the population last year, the fourth consecutive annual increase, the Census Bureau said Tuesday.
The percentage of people without health insurance did not change.
Overall, there were 37 million people living in poverty, up 1.1 million people from 2003."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9130342/

Today, Jimmy Carter gave a speech on global poverty:
Amid laughs, Carter focuses aim on global poverty in annual Town Hall
"He proceeded to say the greatest threat the United States and the world faces is the growing “chasm” between the rich and the poor. He said the average individual in one of the 10 richest countries has an income 137 times greater than a typical person living in one of the 10 poorest countries. Carter asked the audience to imagine living off $1 a day, as 70 percent of Mali’s population does. “There’s nothing left over,” he said. “For health care, for education, for hope, for self-respect.”

The United States should be the “pre-eminent champion of freedom” and “the most generous of all industrialized nations,” Carter said. “Those are the indications of a real super-power.”

Reflecting sentiments he expressed in last year’s Town Meeting, Carter responded to a question about the war in Iraq by saying the U.S. government had “no justification” for going to Iraq. The war was “unnecessary, unjust” and “a horrible mistake,” he said."

http://www.emorywheel.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/09/23/433416d1633c8

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The scariest article is this,
IRAQ: The Nemesis of Imperialism:
"The imperial economy is floundering in a turbulent ocean of debt, living off borrowed time and parasitically off foreign borrowed money, markedly so in the case of Asian central banks. The term “mendicancy” aptly depicts its grasping addiction to foreign handouts. Outstanding national public debt at end-March 2005 was $7.7 trillion, slightly more than two-thirds of GDP, soaring on an average of $2.3bn daily since 30 September 2004. More than $600bn than last year. In the 1990s, $2.8 trillion of new debt was created that dwarfed the national debt prior to 1990. A further $l.6bn was piled on in 2002-2004. Per capita federal government debt is running at around $25,000. According to US Treasury data, that indicates that a family of four is strapped with over $100,000 of federal debt, inseparable from the ever-expanding black hole of the twin deficits and the never-ending state of apoplectic indebtedness.

What we are witnessing is a lethal spiral of the external deficit that’s gone bonkers, with devastating geo-political and economic implications, as the CAD advances relentlessly day by day, week by week, month by month to stand at more than 6% of GDP, up briskly from 4.3% one year ago.

The voraciously debt-addicted empire needs $2.9bn every working day to plug this hole. In just the first three months of 2005, the average annualized trade deficit was $33bn higher than the corresponding period of 2004. Excluding oil prices the deterioration is striking. One devastating number alone encapsulates its dilemma: imports outpaced exports by 60%, which means that US exports must grow 60% faster than US imports just to keep the trade deficit stable."

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m15920&l=i&size=1&hd=0
This is a pretty frightening read. It's an Anti-Imperialism Pro-Iraqi Resistance website so take that into consideration when you read the article.

But on the lighter side, and I suppose this is good news for all you Vietnamese out there but there appears to be and increase of interest in your Dong coming.
Vietnamese dong interest rates to rise
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/GI17Ae02.html

[malaise]

1. “Scratch a Tory and you’ll always find a Fascist.

It was David Lloyd George in the thirties who quipped: “Scratch a Tory and you’ll always find a Fascist.” At this moment one doesn’t need to scratch a neo-conservative to grasp the anatomy of American fascism in its crudest expression. Wendell Wilkie, the US statesman, summarized this neatly on the eve of the Second World War when he warned that “if and when Fascism comes to America it will come under the name of democracy.” For many, this is a truth that has come to pass.

Too good.