The Federal Reserve released what it called a "snapshot of the self-perceived financial and economic well-being of U.S. households" Thursday. The
Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households. It is based on responses to another report, the 2013 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking for which the Fed surveyed 4,100 Americans.
Here's a piece of what Reuters had to say about it:
A quarter of U.S. families feel they are under economic stress due to the aftershock of the Great Recession and most do not expect their wages to increase in the next year, according to a new Federal Reserve study released on Thursday.
In its first large-scale study of household finances, the U.S. central bank uncovered lingering effects of the sharpest economic downturn since the Great Depression, with 42 percent of respondents saying they had delayed major purchases and 18 percent saying they put off a major life decision, including buying a home or getting married, due to the crisis.
Thirty-six percent said they now planned to retire later, according to the online survey.
In a finding that could figure into the Fed's monetary policy debate, three-fourths of households said they expected their incomes to be the same or lower over the next year.
If true, it could mean the economy is far from generating the sort of strong wage growth that Fed Chair Janet Yellen and other policymakers say they hope to see before raising interest rates. […]
It found more than 60 percent of the 4,100 respondents said they were either "doing okay" or "living comfortably," while a third said they were "somewhat worse off or much worse off financially than they had been five years ago." […]
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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2007—We Can't Wait for Bipartisan Solutions:
"We need a consensus."
This is what Joe Biden said a little while ago, when asked by Keith Olberman if he would appoint a Republican to head up the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security. I don’t have the exact language, but he seemed to imply that nothing would work unless it had significant support from Republicans.
I was floored.
If there is anything that has been apparent since the Democratic takeover of Congress, it’s that many and probably most of the current Republican members of Congress will NEVER work with Democrats for the good of the country. Since the rise of Newt Gingrich, the majority of Republicans in Congress have demonstrated that they don’t care about the good of the country. Grover Norquist is inadvertently one of the most honest of conservatives, and when he referred to bipartisanship as date rape, he wasn’t revealing just his own personal view, he was describing the mindset of much of the Republican Congressional caucus and its allies in think tanks, among campaign hacks and activists, and in a sizeable chunk of its electoral base.
It’s a realization many of us had come to long ago. It’s one of the reasons many of us ended up at Daily Kos, the knowledge that George W Bush, his allies in Congress and the people who push them in to power will use unscrupulous means to attain, maintain and exercise power. They know they have to conceal their unscrupulousness from the public.
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Tweet of the Day
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show, taken in by the headline "Maureen McDonnell A 'Nut Bag," we catch up on the trial. An... interesting Twitter exchange over whether DC is (or ever was) "cool." OH man with a rifle in WalMart is shot by cops. Open carry protestor? Nope. His family says it was a toy gun from inside the store. Good news: restaurant workers getting a raise! Bad news: the restaurant's charging them a 2% on credit card tips! VA-10 Gop nominee Barbara Comstock: Kochs & Blackwater lobbyist. Give a monkey enough time with a camera & he'll take a selfie. And challenge the foundations of copyright jurisprudence.
Rolling Stone: everything Republicans believe is wrong.
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