Median Household Income Is Falling In Almost Every Single Major American City

Median household income is falling in the vast majority of U.S. states and in virtually every single major U.S. city.  According to the Census Bureau’s annual survey of income and poverty in the United States, of the 52 largest metro areas in the nation, only the city of San Antonio did not see a decline in median household income in 2009.  Needless to say, that is not good news.  If incomes are falling from coast to coast, then how in the world can anyone claim that we are experiencing a “recovery”?  The truth is that we are not in the middle of an economic recovery.  What we are in the middle of is a long-term economic decline.  Incomes are going down and middle class American families find themselves squeezed like never before.  Meanwhile, unemployment has skyrocketed in recent years and it has become much harder to get a good job.  Less Americans than ever are able to achieve anything even close to resembling the American Dream.  Things are getting really tough out there, and as more jobs and factories leave the United States, as the U.S. government goes into even more debt and as the economy continues to implode things are going to get even worse. (Read More...)

Crackdown! Is The Massive Wave Of Strategic Defaults About To Come To A Screeching Halt?

As housing prices have plummeted over the last several years, an increasing number of U.S. homeowners have suddenly found themselves with home loans that are much larger than what their homes are now worth.  So a large number of them have opted for what is known as a “strategic default” – they have simply walked away from their homes and have let the banks take them back.  Many Americans simply decided that it was not a part of their “American Dream” to pay off a loan that is for two to three times what a house is actually worth.  Over the last several years, strategic defaults have enabled more than a million Americans to get out from under crippling mortgages.  But now, Fannie Mae has announced a massive nationwide crackdown on strategic defaults.  Fannie Mae says that it will be closely examining the mortgage data to determine who is strategically defaulting and who is not, and they are going to be “going after” those who they believe have committed strategic defaults. (Read More...)