Like You and Me

Well, well, well, it appears that the rich, to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, are not all that different from you and me [italics mine]: 

"Most Wealthy Americans Think US Is Still in Recession" (CNBC)

Wealthier Americans aren't very optimistic about the economic recovery, with a surprising 63 percent saying the US is still in a recession, according to a new poll.

Some 55 percent think the economy won’t fully recover until 2013 or later, and 14 percent say the recession won’t end at all.

The results come from the January 2012 survey by Ipsos Mendelsohn Affluent Barometer, which studies the lifestyles, spending patterns and media habits of today’s affluent Americans. Ipsos defines affluent adults as those who have household income of $100,000 or more.

No doubt that also explains the demand for services like this:

Comments

[roger]

Like You and Me, whether individuals or Nations,
there is no greater motivation than self interest
and preservation,that's why for me, economics is
the study of human action when confronted with
material loss, the latest action being the intensification
of financial war,it always is a prelude to armed conflict.

[1,2,3 Conflicted]

@roger, self interest...you got that right.

Goldman Sachs Raises Conflicts to a High Art

Right after a Delaware state judge issued his ruling last week in a shareholder lawsuit contesting Kinder Morgan Inc.’s purchase of El Paso Corp. (EP), the public finger-wagging aimed at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) began.

Goldman, some pundits wrote, had emerged as the biggest loser of the bunch. The bank’s conflicts of interest in advising El Paso on the deal had been castigated by an esteemed jurist as breathtakingly over the top. Once again, Goldman had sullied its precious reputation. And so on, critics said.

While it’s always fun to fantasize about Goldman losing at anything, one gnawing question stands out: What exactly did the company lose? The answer is nothing, as far as I can tell. Actually, it won big.

They were aware that Goldman had every incentive to maximize its own investment and fleece El Paso’s shareholders.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-09/goldman-sachs-raises-conflicts-to-a-high-art-jonathan-weil.html

[Doable Finance]

comments from the wealthy count many more times than poorer folks. So we must listen to them.

[SurvivalAndProsperity.com]

I used to think this group's money allowed them access to better financial/investing intel, but I've found this not to be true.

[Financial Repression Hurts]

Financial Repression Back to Stay: Carmen M. Reinhart

As they have before in the aftermath of financial crises or wars, governments and central banks are increasingly resorting to a form of “taxation” that helps liquidate the huge overhang of public and private debt and eases the burden of servicing that debt.

Such policies, known as financial repression, usually involve a strong connection between the government, the central bank and the financial sector. In the U.S., as in Europe, at present, this means consistent negative real interest rates (yielding less than the rate of inflation) that are equivalent to a tax on bondholders and, more generally, savers.

In the past, other measures also included directed lending to the government by captive domestic entities (such as pension funds or banks), explicit or implicit caps on interest rates, regulation of cross-border capital movements, and (generally) a tighter coordination between governments and banks, either explicitly through public ownership of some institutions or through heavy “moral suasion” by officials.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-11/financial-repression-has-come-back-to-stay-carmen-m-reinhart.html