iftttwall

Perhaps the most peculiar thing about Islamic State is that despite continual reports of highly successful airstrikes and proclamations from various governments regarding the extent to which the group’s operational capacity has been severely diminished, they never seem to go away.

In fact, besides the recent declaration from the group’s leadership that fighters’ salaries will be cut by 50% due to “exceptional circumstances,” we really haven’t seen any concrete evidence to support the contention that “the terrorists” (as Sergei Lavrov matter-of-factly calls them) are on their last legs.

Ramadi was retaken by the Iraqi army but the real prize is Mosul and ISIS remains just as entrenched there as they ever were. The group recently launched a serious offensive in Libya, where the country’s oil infrastructure is under attack. And no one is any closer to liberating Raqqa, the de facto ISIS capital.

Sure, Russia has released hundreds of videos depicting what The Kremlin says are airstrikes against training centers, stongholds, and, most notably, oil tankers but at the end of the day, al-Hayat Media Center continues to churn out the propaganda and the group fights on, seemingly no worse for wear.

One person who isn’t convinced that the group’s capabilities have been curtailed is Vice-Adml Clive Johnstone, a senior NATO Naval officer.

Clive is especially concerned about Islamic State’s maritime “ambitions.” ISIS, he figures, wants to build a navy. “The march of Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (Isil) along the Libyan coast has cast an ‘uncomfortable shadow’ across shipping,” The Telegraph writes, quoting Johnstone.

“We know they have had ambitions to go off shore, we know they would like to have a maritime arm,” the Admiral continues.

Back to that in a moment after a brief trip down hypocrisy lane.

Johnstone says he’s worried about “sophisticated Chinese and Russian” weapons falling into the hands of militant groups like Hezbollah. Those weapons, he says, create a “horrible opportunity” that a “misdirected, untargeted round of a very high quality weapons system will just happen to target a cruise liner, or an oil platform, or a container ship.”

Johnstone apparently isn’t concerned that “sophisticated” American weapons might be used for similar attacks.

After all, the US is arming all sorts of Sunni extremists in Syria and one group (the FSA) has already done exactly what Johnstone claims to be so afraid of: they used a US-supplied TOW to destroy a Russian search and rescue helicopter (see here for more).

The other hypocritical thing to note about Johnstone’s assessment is that it was NATO itself that put Libya in the position it’s in now. Had NATO not supported the overthrow of Gaddafi, we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place and ISIS wouldn’t be running amok in the country’s oil crescent. 

Johnstone goes on to describe what type of attack he imagines might be coming in the Mediterranean.

“I think it won’t be a planned, horrible mischievous act, I think it will be an act which is almost a mistake, or it will be an act of random terrorism that will suddenly have extraordinary implications for the Western world,” he says.

Got that? It will either be some kind of unplanned, “almost” accident that isn’t “horrible” or it will be an earth-shattering, murderous, “random” act of terrorism. It seems pretty clear from that convoluted bit of nonsense that Johnstone has no idea what he’s talking about.

But that’s ok, because the Admiral’s point isn’t to provide any intelligence about a credible threat to a cruise liner. No, his point is to explain why NATO needs to send more ships to the Mediterranean. And because it’s not polite to say “we need to have a stepped up presence because the Russians are there,” he’ll claim extra maritime muscle is necessary because ISIS is building a navy. Here’s The Telegraph again:

The Nato allies must also not allow themselves to be “hustled out” of the eastern Mediterranean, where the Russian Navy is increasingly active, he said.

 

He said the growing risks to shipping in the Mediterranean mean he is “quietly worried” there will be an attack or serious incident.

Got it. So NATO needs more warships in the region because ISIS may be planning a “serious” maritime “incident.” Just like how the US needs to have troops in Syria because of ISIS. And just like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan needs to consolidate power so he can combat the ISIS threat. And just like Russia needs to support Bashar al-Assad in order to keep ISIS from taking Damascus. 

Now that you mention it, you can pretty much justify anything these days by claiming you’re fighting ISIS. Maybe that’s why they’ve stuck around so long. If world powers eliminate them, how will everyone explain their warmongering?

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1Pof8lm Tyler Durden

Student Loan Debt is a cancer for our society. This misconception that getting a college education equals a steady career has been dashed by the recession. For-profit colleges pray on undereducated and low-income individuals. Text book prices have risen exponentially while the cost of a quality education has as well.

 

Source: DailyInfographic.com

This industry of education is going backwards, and will one day burst – will that happen soon?

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1UwocVm Tyler Durden

Two weeks ago, Zero Hedge reported an exclusive story corroborated by at least two independent sources, in which we informed our readers that members of the Dallas Federal Reserve had met with bank lenders with distressed loan exposure to the US oil and gas sector and, after parsing through the complete bank books, had advised banks to i) not urge creditor counterparties into default, ii) urge asset sales instead, and iii) ultimately suspend mark to market in various instances.

The Dallas Fed took the opportunity to respond (on Twitter), when in a tersely worded statement it said the following:

No truth to this @zerohedge story. The Dallas Fed does not issue such guidance to banks. https://t.co/rmE3Zul3PM

— Dallas Fed (@DallasFed) January 18, 2016

We thanked the Fed for answering even if its response was in itself a lie, and further since we fully stood by our story, we asked the Federal Reserve chaired by Goldman Sachs veteran, Robert Kaplan, to answer several follow up questions regarding this matter which is of significant public interest.  To wit:

• Has the Dallas Fed, or any other members and individuals of the Federal Reserve System, met with U.S. bank and other lender management teams in recent weeks/months and if so what was the purpose of such meetings?
• Has the Dallas Fed, or any other members and individuals of the Federal Reserve System, requested that banks and other lenders present their internal energy loan books and loan marks for Fed inspection in recent weeks/months?
• Has the Dallas Fed, or any other members and individuals of the Federal Reserve System, discussed options facing financial lenders, and other creditors, who have distressed credit exposure including but not limited to:
  • avoiding defaults on distressed debtor counterparties?
  • encouraging asset sales for distressed debtor counterparties?
  • advising banks to avoid the proper marking of loan exposure to market?
  • advising banks to mark loan exposure to a model framework, one created either by the creditors themselves or one presented by members of the Federal Reserve network?
  • avoiding the presentation of public filings with loan exposure marked to market values of counterparty debt?
• Was the Dallas Fed, or any other members and individuals of the Federal Reserve System, consulted before the January 15, 2016 Citigroup Q4 earnings call during which the bank refused to disclose to the public the full extent of its reserves related to its oil and gas loan exposure, as quoted from CFO John Gerspach:

  “while we are taking what we believe to be the appropriate reserves for that, I’m just not prepared to give you a specific number right now as far as the amount of reserves that we have on that particular book of business. That’s just not something that we’ve traditionally done in the past.”

• Furthermore, if the Dallas Fed, or any other members and individuals of the Federal Reserve system, were not consulted when Citigroup made the decision to withhold such relevant information on potential energy loan losses, does the Federal Reserve System believe that Citigroup is in compliance with its public disclosure requirements by withholding such information from its shareholders and the public?
• If the Dallas Fed does not issue “such” guidance to banks, then what precisely guidance does the Dallas Fed issue to banks?

We assumed (correctly) there would be no Twitter, or any other unofficial response to this list of questions, which is why two weeks ago we, in collaboration with several readers (due to obvious reverse FOIA purposes), also requested an official response from the Fed through a Freedom Of Information Act submission. Surely if the Fed would go so far as to call us liars, it would have no problem either responding or providing the required information.

This is what we got back.

We appreciate the “response.”

With regard to [1] and [2], we find it disturbing that the Dallas Fed not only does not keep internal logs of who visits the Fed (or whom the Fed visits), but especially that there is no internal log of whom the President meets with as part of ordinary course of business.

This is troubling when one considers that as part of its routine disclosures, the NY Fed not only keeps a detailed log of the President’s daily schedules but also makes them publicly available each quarter (link to the most recent one). One wonders how the Board, and the president, holds itself “reasonably” accountable to the public if there is no internal record at all of any in house meetings, which clearly become a relevant topic in issues such as this.

As for [3], we will gladly readdress the question in the proper semantic protocol, and will follow back with another FOIA requesting the explicit financial records of bank energy loan books which the Fed has collected as part of its recent diligence efforts to uncover which banks are underreserved, the same diligence that prompted the Fed to pursue the procedure that prompted our article in the first place, a procedure which the Dallas Fed alleges “there is no truth” to.

We look forward to discovering what excuse the Dallas Fed will provide to not supply the requested information in that particular FOIA request.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1JNE1Xw Tyler Durden

By EconMatters

 

It seems we may have bottomed in the oil market, and a lot of shorts are starting to get nervous considering their large short trading book right now. Can you say “Short Squeeze”?

 

 

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via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1nUfN3H EconMatters

With Citi's chief economist proclaiming "only helicopter money can save the world now," and the Bank of England pre-empting paradropping money concerns, it appears that Australia's largest investment bank's forecast that money-drops were 12-18 months away was too conservative. While The Finns consider a "basic monthly income" for the entire population, Swiss residents are to vote on a countrywide referendum about a radical plan to pay every single adult a guaranteed income of around $2500 per month, with authorities insisting that people will still want to find a job.

The plan, as The Daily Mail reports, proposed by a group of intellectuals, could make the country the first in the world to pay all of its citizens a monthly basic income regardless if they work or not.  But the initiative has not gained much traction among politicians from left and right despite the fact that a referendum on it was approved by the federal government for the ballot box on June 5.

Under the proposed initiative, each adult would receive $2,500 per months, and each child would also receive 625 francs ($750) a month.

 

The federal government estimates the cost of the proposal at 208 billion francs ($215 billion) a year.

 

Around 153 billion francs ($155 bn) would have to be levied from taxes, while 55 billion francs ($60 bn) would be transferred from social insurance and social assistance spending.

That is 30% of GDP!!!

The action committee pushing the initiative consists of artists, writers and intellectuals, including publicist Daniel Straub, former federal government spokesman Oswald Sigg and Zurich rapper Franziska Schläpfer (known as “Big Zis”), the SDA news agency reported. Personalities supporting the bid include writers Adolf Muschg and Ruth Schweikert, philosopher Hans Saner and communications expert Beatrice Tschanz. The group said a new survey showed that the majority of Swiss residents would continue working if the guaranteed income proposal was approved.

'The argument of opponents that a guaranteed income would reduce the incentive of people to work is therefore largely contradicted,' it said in a statement quoted by The Local.

 

However, a third of the 1,076 people interviewed for the survey by the Demoscope Institute believed that 'others would stop working'.

 

And more than half of those surveyed (56 percent) believe the guaranteed income proposal will never see the light of day.

The initiative’s backers say it aims to break the link between employment and income, with people entitled to guaranteed income regardless of whether they work.

Or put another way – break the link between actually having to work for anything ever again… but maybe this "group of itellentuals" should hark Margaret Thatcher's words that "eventually you run out of other people's money!!"

*  *  *

As we previously detailed, support is growing around the world for such spending to be funded by “People’s QE.” The idea behind “People’s QE” is that central banks would directly fund government spending… and even inject money directly into household bank accounts, if need be. And the idea is catching on.

Already the European Central Bank is buying bonds of the European Investment Bank, an E.U. institution that finances infrastructure projects. And the new leader of Britain’s Labor Party, Jeremy Corbyn, is backing a British version of this scheme.

 

That’s the monster coming to towns and villages near you! Call it “overt monetary financing.” Call it “money from helicopters.” Call it “insane.” 

 

But it won’t be unpopular. Who will protest when the feds begin handing our money to “mid- and low-income households”?

Simply put, The Keynesian Endgame is here… as  the only way to avoid secular stagnation (which, for the uninitiated, is just another complicated-sounding, economist buzzword for the more colloquial “everything grinds to a halt”) is for central bankers to call in the Krugman Kraken and go full-Keynes.

Rather than buying assets, central banks drop money on the street. Or even better, in a more modern and civilised fashion, credit our bank accounts! That, after all, may be more effective than buying assets, and would not imply the same transfer of wealth as previous or current forms of QE. Indeed, ‘helicopter money’ can be seen as permanent QE, where the central bank commits to making the increase in the monetary base permanent.

 

Again, crediting accounts does not guarantee that money will be spent – in contrast to monetary financing where the newly created cash can be used for fiscal spending. And in many cases, such policy would actually imply fiscal policy, as most central banks cannot conduct helicopter money operations on their own.

 

…

 

So again, the thing to realize here is that this has moved well beyond the theoretical and it's not entirely clear that most people understand how completely absurd this has become (and this isn't necessarily a specific critique of SocGen by the way, it's just an honest look at what's going on). At the risk of violating every semblance of capital market analysis decorum, allow us to just say that this is pure, unadulterated insanity. There's not even any humor in it anymore.

 

You cannot simply print a piece of paper, sell it to yourself, and then use the virtual pieces of paper you just printed to buy your piece of paper to stimulate the economy. There's no credibility in that whatsoever, and we don't mean that in the somewhat academic language that everyone is now employing on the way to criticizing the Fed, the ECB, and the BoJ.

And it will end only one way…

The monetizing of state debt by the central bank is the engine of helicopter money. When the central state issues $1 trillion in bonds and drops the money into household bank accounts, the central bank buys the new bonds and promptly buries them in the bank's balance sheet as an asset.

 

The Japanese model is to lower interest rates to the point that the cost of issuing new sovereign debt is reduced to near-zero. Until, of course, the sovereign debt piles up into a mountain so vast that servicing the interest absorbs 40+% of all tax revenues.

 

But the downsides of helicopter money are never mentioned, of course. Like QE (i.e. monetary stimulus), fiscal stimulus (helicopter money) will be sold as a temporary measure that quickly become permanent, as the economy will crater the moment it is withdrawn.

The temporary relief turns out to be, well, heroin, and the Cold Turkey withdrawal, full-blown depression.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1PZJNSk Tyler Durden

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Former FX trader at Citigroup, Chris Arnade, just penned a poignant and entertaining Op-ed at The Guardian detailing how Wall Street came to own the Democratic Party via the Clintons over the course of his career. While anyone reading this already knows how completely bought and paid for the Clintons are by the big financial interests, the article provides some interesting anecdotes as well as a classic quote about a young Larry Summers.

Here are some choice excerpts from the piece:

I owe almost my entire Wall Street career to the Clintons. I am not alone; most bankers owe their careers, and their wealth, to them. Over the last 25 years they – with the Clintons it is never just Bill or Hillary – implemented policies that placed Wall Street at the center of the Democratic economic agenda, turning it from a party against Wall Street to a party of Wall Street.

 

That is why when I recently went to see Hillary Clinton campaign for president and speak about reforming Wall Street I was skeptical. What I heard hasn’t changed that skepticism. The policies she offers are mid-course corrections. In the Clintons’ world, Wall Street stays at the center, economically and politically. Given Wall Street’s power and influence, that is a dangerous place to leave them.

 

The administration’s economic policy took shape as trickle down, Democratic style. They championed free trade, pushing Nafta. They reformed welfare, buying into the conservative view that poverty was about dependency, not about situation. They threw the old left a few bones, repealing prior tax cuts on the rich, but used the increased revenues mostly on Wall Street’s favorite issue: cutting the debt.

 

Most importantly, when faced with their first financial crisis, they bailed out Wall Street.

 

That crisis came in January 1995, halfway through the administration’s first term. Mexico, after having boomed from the optimism surrounding Nafta, went bust. It was a huge embarrassment for the administration, given the push they had made for Nafta against a cynical Democratic party.

 

Money was fleeing Mexico, and much of it was coming back through me and my firm. Selling investors’ Mexican bonds was my first job on Wall Street, and now they were trying to sell them back to us. But we hadn’t just sold Mexican bonds to clients, instead we did it using new derivatives product to get around regulatory issues and take advantages of tax rules, and lend the clients money. Given how aggressive we were, and how profitable it was for us, older traders kept expecting to be stopped by regulators from the new administration, but that didn’t happen.

 

When Mexico started to collapse, the shudders began. Initially our firm lost only tens of millions, a large loss but not catastrophic. The crisis however was worsening, and Mexico was headed towards a default, or closing its border to money flows. We stood to lose hundreds of millions, something we might not have survived. Other Wall Street firms were in worse shape, having done the trade in a much bigger size. The biggest was rumored to be Lehman, which stood to lose billions, a loss they couldn’t have survived.

 

As the crisis unfolded, senior management traveled to DC as part of a group of bankers to meet with Treasury officials. They had hoped to meet with Rubin, who was now Treasury secretary. Instead they met with the undersecretary for international affairs who my boss described as: “Some young egghead academic who likes himself a lot and is wide eyed with a taste of power.” That egghead was Larry Summers who would succeed Rubin as Treasury Secretary.

 

The bailout worked, with Mexico edging away from a crisis, allowing it to repay the loans, at profit. It also worked wonders on Wall Street, which let out a huge sigh of relief.

 

The success encouraged the administration, which used it as an economic blueprint that emphasized Wall Street. It also emphasized bailouts, believing it was counterproductive to let banks fail, or to punish them with losses, or fines or, God forbid, charge them with crimes, and risk endangering the economy.

 

The use of bailouts should have also been a reason to heavily regulate Wall Street, to prevent behavior that would require a bailout. But the administration didn’t do that; instead they went the opposite direction and continued to deregulate it, culminating in the repeal of Glass Steagall in 1999.

 

It changed the trading floor, which started to fill with Democrats. On my trading floor, Robert Rubin, who had joined my firm after leaving the administration, held traders attention by telling long stories and jokes about Bill Clinton to wide-eyed traders.

 

Wall Street now had both political parties working for them, and really nobody holding them accountable. Now, no trade was too aggressive, no risk too crazy, no behavior to unethical and no loss too painful. It unleashed a boom that produced plenty of smaller crisis (Russia, Dotcom), before culminating in the housing and financial crisis of 2008.

But hey…

For related articles on Hillary’s long standing Wall Street love affair, see:

Peak Desperation – Clinton Campaign Deploys Strategist for Wall Street Mega Banks to Attack Bernie Sanders

A New Low – Hillary Clinton Claims 9/11 is the Reason She’s Owned by Wall Street

COMPROMISED – How Two of Hillary Clinton’s Top Aides Received Golden Parachutes from Wall Street

Who’s the Real Progressive? A Side by Side Comparison of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton’s Lifetime Donors

Here Come the Cronies – Buffett and Blackstone President Launch $33,400 a Plate Hillary Clinton Fundraiser

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1OVxSY4 Tyler Durden

Going into Friday, Japanese monetary policy already stood out as the most egregious example of Keynesian insanity the market has ever witnessed.

You’ll recall the central bank is monetizing the entirety of gross JGB issuance and is on a lunatic quest to own the entire ETF market.

But the BoJ still hadn’t gone full-Krugman by taking rates negative. That changed overnight when the bank took the NIRP plunge as Haruhiko Kuroda reminded the world that when it comes to maniacal monetary policy, no one does it like he does.

Why is NIRP necessary in Japan? The same reason it’s necessary in Europe and the same reason ZIRP had to hang around in the US for eight years: inflation. Or, more specifically, a lack of inflation.

Japan has been stuck in the deflationary doldrums for as long as some Wall Street rookies have been alive and Europe has bounced around in deflation on several occasions of late although data out today showed eurozone inflation “soaring” 0.4%.

So what gives? How much damn fiat money do the Kurodas and Yellens and Draghis of the world have to print before inflation picks up? Are central bankers contributing to the problem by destroying creative destruction and thus perpetuating the global deflationary supply glut?

The problem, BofA’s Michael Hartnett says, can be traced to the “Deflationary D’s”: debt, deleveraging, demographics, disruption. Read on to discover why “the nominal GDP of the industrialized world has grown just 4.1% since the lows of Q1’2009, one of the tiniest, deflationary expansions ever. “

*  *  *

From BofA

The nominal GDP of the industrialized world has grown just 4.1% since the lows of Q1’2009, one of the tiniest, deflationary expansions ever. And while asset prices are up significantly since their 2008/09 lows, the underlying message from Wall Street in recent years (underperformance of bank stocks – see Chart 1, stubbornly low government bond yields, all-time relative highs in “high quality” stocks, and sustained outperformance of “growth” stocks over “value” stocks) has been doggedly deflationary.

 The Deflationary “D’s”

Why has an almost manic monetary policy been so ineffective at generating a broad, sustained economic recovery, or at least alleviating the threat of deflation? Secular factors, most obviously the 4 deflationary “D’s” of excess Debt, financial sector Deleveraging, aging Demographics and tech Disruption have played a major role:

• 1. Debt levels remain very large: according to the BIS, global debt as a share of GDP was 246% in Q4’2000, 269% in Q4’2007 and 286% in Q2’2014.
• 2. Deleveraging has impeded the housing recovery and its “multiplier” effect: CoreLogic’s Housing Credit Index, which measures mortgage credit availability in the US, has plunged from 100 to 42 in the past seven years; US mortgage credit outstanding has fallen more than $1tn since its peak of $14.8tn in ’08.
• 3. Demographics reveal a dramatic aging of the developed world’s population: in the next 10 days, 112,000 people in the US, Europe and Japan will reach the retirement age of 65.
• 4. Disruption via innovation in robotics, AI and so on, which the World Economic Forum forecasts will cause the loss of a net 5.1mn jobs in the next 5 years.

And while all are secular in nature, the deflationary D’s have also impacted the economic cycle in recent quarters: excess Debt and financial sector Deleveraging have exacerbated problems in China, energy and credit markets; tech Disruption has been a massive factor in the collapse in the oil price; aging Demographics and tech Disruption have played a role in the desire of the Consumer to save rather than spend in the past 18 months.

Indeed, even in the US, the ease with which debt, deleveraging, demographics and disruption have nullified the strong tailwinds of low mortgage rates, low unemployment rates and collapsing gas prices, thus resulting in higher household savings rates, has surprised many. It certainly goes far in explaining the “deflationary” nature of the economic expansion, the wage inequality and insecurity associated with this decade, as well as the rise in political populism across the western world.

*  *  *

We suppose that at some point, policy makers will heed the (loud) calls for helicopter money and once the cash paradropping begins, we’ll see you in the Weimar Republic.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1SOXABb Tyler Durden

Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

Skyrocketing costs and shrinking opportunity are meeting head on with full on economic disaster. The Dude, Where’s My Stuff? generation doesn’t have much motivation to go on for growing up and getting their life together these days.

Record numbers are out of the work force; record numbers are living with their parents in the basement; record numbers are losing the battle of return on investment with higher education – purchased with burdensome loans – in order to attain better employment and stability. Rising costs are hitting home owners and renters alike, with a real squeeze coming down on those just starting out.

And all of that is driving the economy to the brink.

That American Dream thing is a going up in smoke. Upward mobility has stalled, and stagnation is setting in.

It is becoming apparent that a lost generation is upon us, and the Americans of tomorrow may not even have a meager concept of what this country stood for, because their lives will be so completely desolate and controlled.

A Forbes columnist asked the question: Can Millennials Afford The American Dream? Forbes’ Kerri Zane writes:

The local radio news station in Los Angeles recently reported that the rental rates in this city have reached apocalyptic levels. So it stands to reason the next best step is to purchase a home. Easier said than done, particularly for millennials.

 

At the end of last year my 25-year-old daughter and I were discussing this issue. She and her live-in boyfriend had been exploring the notion, but with the median home price in Los Angeles exceeding $500,000.00, it is completely out of reach for them. Between juggling school loan payoffs and each working in the freelance world of entertainment, saving for a down payment and/or qualifying for a mortgage, in this day and age, is tough.

 

[…]

 

Over the last 20 plus years I have watched as the cost of living in the U.S., and more specifically Los Angeles, steadily climbed. It became apparent, without a doubt, that if my daughters (I have two) were going to have a home, it would be up to mom to help them.

 

Before you rush to judgement about my children’s work ethic or my parenting style… look at the stats… home affordability will decline through-out 2016 by 4 to 5%. We all know that at the end of 2015 the feds increased mortgage rates, and real estate pundits predict home prices will continue to appreciate at 3 to 4%… the cost of  in-state tuition and fees at public four-year institutions have increased at an average rate of 3.4% per year beyond inflation.

These kids are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

It is a pertinent question for this generation. Will there be security and prosperity for those who are willing to work hard?

Basically, all the trends are headed in the wrong direction for a healthy society.

Demographically, people are falling in on themselves.

The Pew Research Center conducted a study in 2012 on the rising number of millennials living with their parents, and the reasons contributing to the decline:

In 2012, 36% of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31—the so-called Millennial generation—were living in their parents’ home, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. This is the highest share in at least four decades and represents a slow but steady increase over the 32% of their same-aged counterparts who were living at home prior to the Great Recession in 2007 and the 34% doing so when it officially ended in 2009.

 

A record total of 21.6 million Millennials lived in their parents’ home in 2012, up from 18.5 million of their same aged counterparts in 2007. Of these, at least a third and perhaps as many as half are college students.

 

[…]

 

Since the onset of the 2007-2009 recession, both age groups have experienced a rise in this living arrangement.

 

[…]

 

The steady rise in the share of young adults who live in their parents’ home appears to be driven by a combination of economic, educational and cultural factors. Among them:

 

Declining employment. … Rising college enrollment. … Declining marriage.

And that’s just for those who were willing to give things a try.

The rest are on the dole, and bulging the size and scope of federal government even further, and millions falling to the bottom are looking to the government as a parental figure and savior – who dispenses benefits and can “take care of” them.

A wave of unemployment, and those who have permanently dropped out of the work force and all appearances of looking for work, is setting in. And things don’t look pretty from there.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/20cajCE Tyler Durden

 

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/23yZUQO George Washington