From: Adam <""4thwormcastfromthemolehill\"{at}the field.near
the bridge">

Gary Britt wrote:
> But to the contrary:  USA household net worth is at record highs.
> What's the household net worth in the EU?
>

They don't really calculate it in the way the US does however....

A) Paying for it via a housing bubble & plunging the gov into deep debt
merely hides the problems e.g:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53413

"The real 2006 federal budget deficit was $4.6 trillion, not a
previously reported $248.2 billion, according to the 2006 Financial Report
of the United States Government as released by the Treasury Department
Friday.

"The 2006 federal budget deficit of $4.6 trillion is $1.1 trillion
more than the 2005 federal budget deficit," econometrician John
Williams, who publishes the website Shadow Government Statistics, told WND.
"The Bush administration is in an untenable situation with a budget
deficit this dramatic. Taxing 100 percent of all wages, salaries, and
corporate profits would not eliminate a deficit of this magnitude, and
cutting Social Security and Medicare spending is politically
impossible." "

&

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aQKw_vL7cuLQ&refer=home

" The problems in the subprime market may be just the tip of the
iceberg, given the depth and duration of the housing bubble -- and the
money tied up in it.

``We've created an unproductive asset,'' says Joe Carson, director of
global economic research at AllianceBernstein. ``A house doesn't produce
income.''

Mortgage debt rose by $4.7 trillion from the end of 2000 through the third
quarter of 2006, according to the Fed's Flow of Funds report. ``We created
as much debt in housing in the last six years as we did in the prior 50,''
Carson says.

After the late 1990s stock market bubble, the economy recovered with a
combination of interest-rate relief and income growth, he says.

That rate relief was the cause of the current housing bubble, former Fed
Chairman Alan Greenspan's claim about the Berlin Wall coming down
notwithstanding. How can the cause also be the cure?

"

& then just to cheer you up.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article399.html



Adam


> Gary
>
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070308/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/fed_household_finances_
1
>
>
> WASHINGTON - The net worth of U.S. households climbed to a record high
> in the final quarter of last year, boosted mostly by gains on stocks, the
> Federal Reserve reported Thursday.
> ADVERTISEMENT
>
> Net worth — the difference between households' total assets, such as
> houses and bank accounts, and their total liabilities, such as mortgages
> and credit card debt, totaled $55.6 trillion in the October-to-December
> quarter.
>
> That marked a 2.5 percent growth rate from the third quarter, the
> previous quarterly record high. Stocks gains helped fuel the increase in
> net worth, although real-estate gains played a role, too.
>
> Adam > wrote:
>>> But hey the Euro is doing great!!!!!    ROFL.  Those two paragraphs so
>>> funny and so true and so predictive of what's to come for them.  Maybe
>>> once the muslims take over in Europe and sharia law is implemented they
>>> will be able to get those vacations and unions under control.  I don't
>>> think the Koran provides for union breaks or unions at all.  And they
>>> won't have a problem with unemployment, because all the women will be
>>> forced out of jobs and out of schools and won't any longer be counted as
>>> part of the workforce statistics.
>>>
>>> Gary
>>
>> It's doing better than the Dollar & US economy
>>
>> "Analysts have been stumped by the apparent resilience of the U.S.
>> economy, which seemed to be bounding ahead at a 3.5 percent pace in the
>> final quarter of last year even as the housing market fell and the
>> Federal Reserve raised interest rates.
>>
>> The paradox has been solved: The economy was not bounding. The Commerce
>> Department reported Wednesday that economic growth inched ahead by 2.2
>> percent in the fourth quarter of last year, only slightly faster than
>> the 2 percent growth recorded in the third quarter and far below the
>> economy's long-term trend rate of growth.
>>
>> The downward revision in the preliminary estimate of gross domestic
>> product, of 1.3 percentage points, was almost three times as big as the
>> average adjustment since the early 1980s, of 0.5 percentage points.
>>
>> Coupled with a reported 17 percent decline in new-home sales in January
>> and a 7.8 percent drop in February in orders of durable goods like
>> computers and washing machines, the new data indicated the economy had
>> been much weaker than it seemed.
>>
>> "I think we are going to discover that the economy is softer than the
>> Fed thinks," said Robert Barbera, chief economist at ITG in
New York."
>>
>> Never mind, when the Latinos take over they will force you to lie around
>> at midday for a couple of hours so at least you'll de-stress about your
>> decline.
>>
>> Adam

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