Just in case you were worried about the super-rich, don't.
Great Recession? What recession? The world’s millionaires and billionaires — now totaling 10 million — saw their overall wealth jumped 18.9 percent last year, to $39 trillion.
The surge in the stock market in 2009 restored many people back to the ranks of the rich as the financial crisis abated. The number of people with at least $1 million in assets beyond their homes and household goods climbed 17 percent, according to a report on the world’s wealth by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini, a Paris-based business consulting firm. Their total wealth approached the 2007 peak of $40.7 trillion, after a 20 percent plunge to $32.8 trillion in 2008....
As expected, the most millionaires could be found in the United States, where their ranks rose 16.5 percent, to 2.87 million, last year, according to the report. Their total wealth in North America rose 17.8 percent, to $10.7 trillion.
Meanwhile:
It's been a full three weeks since lawmakers failed to reauthorize extended unemployment benefits, to prevent a 21 percent pay cut to doctors who see Medicare patients and to provide states with $24 billion in Medicaid assistance. The House passed a bill at the end of May, but the Senate adjourned for its Memorial Day recess without acting. Since then, Senate Democrats have been unable muster the 60 vote supermajority needed to get the legislation done.
Meanwhile, 903,000 people jobless through no fault of their own have missed unemployment checks and doctors are getting shorted for taking care of old folks....
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) told reporters she's been talking with Reid and Baucus about using unspent stimulus funds (which Democrats have argued are already dedicated to other projects) to offset a portion of the $24 billion in enhanced Federal Medicaid Assistance Percentages (FMAP), which various state governors have said are urgently needed to prevent massive public sector layoffs. The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that without the FMAP money, states will be forced to fire 900,000 workers. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she was discussing ways to phase out the FMAP funding so that states don't face a sudden drop-off.
Snowe said she would not insist that the unemployment benefits -- which will cost more than $30 billion -- be paid for. "I think the economy has not demonstrated the capacity to create jobs," she said, "so I think it's our burden to turn that around, not to foist that on those who are unemployed and dependent on unemployment benefits."
Some Republicans and Democrats in both the House and Senate have said they believe it is, in fact, time to foist that burden onto the unemployed, who they suspect aren't finding jobs because they'd rather collect benefits than look for work.
Last night, Senators Stabenow, Casey, Merkley, and Whitehouse led an effort of Dem Senators on the floor in an attempt to push passing, at least, unemployment benefits. Republicans, of course, objected. None of them--Snowe included (she wants to see the few revenue raisers in the bill removed)--suggested that those people for whom the recession is emphatically over, to the tune of $10.7 trillion, pitch in.
