Courtesy of Pam Martens
President Obama Delivers His State of the Union Address, January 12, 2016
Yesterday, there were two assessments on the state of the union. Both came with fancy charts. One was delivered by the President of the United States, who sounded very much like the Pope in seeking peace among members of Congress and individual citizens. The other was delivered by a hard core realist – Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of investment management firm, DoubleLine Capital.
If you watched the President’s State of the Union speech at WhiteHouse.gov, you got to see the interesting charts – some are still available here along with a transcript of the speech. One chart, shown below, reads: “Today, the top 3 percent of the richest Americans hold half the nation’s wealth.” That correct assessment, unfortunately, makes another statement by the President impossible to justify. The President told the highly cynical American people the following: “Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.”
Chart Displayed at WhiteHouse.gov During the President’s State of the Union Address
It’s simply impossible to have an economy or a democracy moving in the right direction when wealth and income is clustered in so few hands. There is simply not enough purchasing power in the hands of the masses to buy the goods and services being produced by the rich corporate owners.
It’s not just the Republican candidates running for President who are saying the U.S. is in decline. It’s also Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont who is running as a Democrat. Sanders is stumping across the U.S. telling tens of thousands of fellow realists the following…
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