Obamacare Fines to be Seized From Bank Accounts?

Man who attempted to sign up claims he was threatened with drivers license being revoked, federal tax lien on home
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
October 2, 2013

A man who attempted to sign up for Obamacare online was told that a fine of over $4,000 dollars a year for refusing to take out mandatory health insurance could be taken directly from his bank account, and that his drivers license would be suspended and a federal tax lien placed against his home, according to an entry on the HealthCare.gov Facebook page.

Image: Obama signs the Affordable Care Act.

If true, the implementation of Obamacare is going to be a whole lot more draconian than Americans have been led to believe.

Will Sheehan claims that when he tried to sign up for Obamacare and then register to opt out, he received an ominous warning. Sheehan’s full Facebook post reads;

“I actually made it through this morning at 8:00 A.M. I have a preexisting condition (Type 1 Diabetes) and my income base was 45K-55K annually I chose tier 2 “Silver Plan” and my monthly premiums came out to $597.00 with $13,988 yearly deductible!!! There is NO POSSIBLE way that I can afford this so I “opt-out” and chose to continue along with no insurance.

I received an email tonight at 5:00 P.M. informing me that my fine would be $4,037 and could be attached to my yearly income tax return. Then you make it to the “REPERCUSSIONS PORTION” for “non-payment” of yearly fine. First, your drivers license will be suspended until paid, and if you go 24 consecutive months with “Non-Payment” and you happen to be a home owner, you will have a federal tax lien placed on your home. You can agree to give your bank information so that they can easy “Automatically withdraw” your “penalties” weekly, bi-weekly or monthly! This by no means is “Free” or even “Affordable.”

Sheehan went on to point out that the site makes you input all your personal information before giving you an indication of the costs, meaning a database of the “uninsured” is being built. He added that he could not afford to pay the premium so would have to break the law and pay the fine, leaving him with no health care coverage.

The federal government has consistently denied that any fines pertaining to Obamacare non-compliance could be seized from bank accounts, despite reports last year that the IRS had hired 16,500 new agents to harass citizens who attempt to evade the new law.

“There’s no criminal sanctions for not paying this, and there’s no ability to levy a bank account or do seizures,” then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman said in April 2010.

In addition, Americans who refuse to pay for mandatory health insurance “shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution,” according to the law itself.

Section 1501(g)(2) of the Affordable Care Act also states that the IRS cannot “file notice of lien with respect to any property of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the penalty imposed by this section.”

Either Sheehan’s claim that he received this notice is a lie, or the feds have been dishonest with the American people all along, and the revolt against Obamacare is about to take “don’t tread on me” to a whole new level.

Read a copy of the full exchange on Facebook below.

Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/paul.j.watson.71
FOLLOW Paul Joseph Watson @ https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

This article was posted: Wednesday, October 2, 2013 at 11:47 am

Obama’s Justification for Closing the Small Business Administration Doesn’t Add Up, According to the American Small Business League

ASBL President Lloyd Chapman issued the following:
Ronald Reagan tried to permanently close the Small Business Administration (SBA) during his administration. His plan to permanently close the SBA was to combine it with the Department of Commerce.
In November of 2008, I predicted President Obama would try and close the SBA by combining it with the Department of Commerce.
President Obama proved me right in January of 2012 when he announced his plan to close the SBA as Reagan tried, by combining it with the Department of Commerce. President Obama’s sole excuse for essentially closing the SBA is to save a paltry, miniscule $300 million a year.
Lets put that into perspective. The current SBA budget is .001 percent of the Pentagon budget. The SBA’s annual budget is approximately $700 million while the Pentagon budget is $700 billion.
The Pentagon’s own auditors found 25 percent of the Pentagon’s expenditures could not be accounted for.
That means, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., the Pentagon loses $87 million an hour. The Pentagon loses more money every day, before lunch than President Obama claims will be saved by essentially closing the SBA by combining it with the Department of Commerce.
That means the Pentagon loses enough money every day to run the SBA for a full year.
President Obama’s claim that $300 million a year can be saved by closing the SBA is ludicrous and absurd, so what’s the real reason?
Every year of the Obama Administration, the SBA Inspector General, Peg Gustafson, who was appointed by President Obama, has named the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants as the number one problem at the SBA.
Information from the SBA indicates that last year, 235 Fortune 500 firms received federal small business contracts. A series of federal investigations and investigative reports have all found rampant fraud at the SBA and every year billions of dollars in federal small business contracts have been diverted to Fortune 500 firms.
The Government Accountability Office investigated a SBA managed program and released Report 10-108. It stated, “By failing to hold firms accountable, the SBA and contracting agencies have sent a message to the contracting community that there is no punishment or consequences for committing fraud.”
I don’t think President Obama wants to close the SBA to save a miniscule, infinitesimal $300 million a year. I think he wants to close the SBA to obscure the rampant fraud and abuse that has been uncovered at the SBA during Karen Mills’ tenure as administrator.
It certainly doesn’t make sense to close the SBA to save $300 million a year when the Pentagon loses more than that every day before lunch, now does it?
For the latest video from the ASBL, click here.

• Topics: Other Government, Other Policy Issues, Product/Service, Professional Services, Public Policy, Public Policy/Government, Small Business, White House/Federal Government

Forget the Welfare State?

The welfare state has been under pressure since the mid-1980s and the onset of neoliberal economic policies across Europe. Capital has used the current crisis to intensify this pressure further. In Southern Europe, this is often directly enforced through the Troika (European Union, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund) in exchange for bailout packages, but in other countries such as the UK too, drastic cuts are justified by reference to increasing national debt and the global financial crisis. Trade unions and civil society organizations have struggled hard to defend the welfare state, but it has been a defensive struggle all the way and many aspects have already been lost. Trade union rights have been curbed in many countries, key industries such as telecommunications and postal services privatized and core services such as health and education increasingly marketized. Full employment policies have been a thing of the past for quite some time. In this blog post, I will reflect on the nature and contents of the welfare state and the possibilities of defending its achievements.
The welfare state is generally considered a major success of labour movements in industrialized countries. And indeed, as Asbj�rn Wahl outlines in his book The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State [also see LeftStreamed No. 154], it was the strength of labour movements, built up in industrial struggles at the beginning of the 20th century, which forced concessions from capital against the background of regime competition during the Cold War. In exchange for continuing control over the means of production, capital accepted an expanded welfare state, policies of full employment and a strong role of trade unions in economic and social policy-making.
Class Compromise
Importantly, however, this is only part of the story. As Wahl also makes clear, the welfare state included desirable qualities for capital too. Employers rely to a considerable extent on a healthy, well-educated and highly trained workforce in order to remain competitive. An efficient infrastructure and the provision of public services are also important to capital. In short, the welfare state has never been more than a compromise. In exchange for public services and employment, labour movements had to give up their ambition to reform or revolutionize the system beyond capitalism toward a socialist society based on the common, socialized ownership of the means of production.
If the welfare state is attacked now, then this implies that capital has renounced its side of the compromise. In times of high unemployment, there is a big enough reserve army of workers ready to snap up whatever job comes their way. Many labour intensive jobs are transferred to low wage countries, while capital increasingly focuses on the training of a small, highly educated workforce in industrialized countries. In any case, if there are not enough skilled workers, employers bring in migrant workers, who in turn are missing for development in their countries of origin. The general education of wider society is no longer a top priority.

The fact that capital was able to renounce its part of the compromise ultimately reflects the change in the power balance in society since the early 1970s. Against the background of transnational production and deregulated national financial markets, the balance of power has decisively tipped in favour of capital and at the expense of labour. In this situation, defensive struggles to protect the welfare state are doomed to fail. Worst excesses may be avoided, the dismantling of services may be delayed, but ultimately the welfare state will be gone.
What does this imply for the strategy of labour? In my view, the defence of something, which cannot be defended, is the wrong way forward. Is this not the time to return to the initial vision of transforming society beyond capitalism? A society in which universal access to health care, education, public transport, etc. is part of the very foundation rather than depending on the goodwill of employers? Is this not the time to mobilize the workforce afresh around a programme, which challenges capital much more fundamentally and puts forward the vision of a socialist alternative? •
Andreas Bieler is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Nottingham/UK. He maintains a blog at andreasbieler.blogspot.no where this article first appeared.
Copyright: Global Research

Colombians Successfully Revolt Against Seed Control and Agricultural Tyranny

Early in September, 2013, the Colombian government was forced to partially concede to the demands of a nationwide general strike instigated by farmers of the largely agrarian nation.
Will Colombia’s farmers defeat the economic hitmen of the agricultural industry?
Early in September, 2013, the Colombian government was forced to partially concede to the demands of a nationwide general strike instigated by farmers of the largely agrarian nation. The three week long protests and blockades that shut down much of the nation were supported by thousands of miners, truckers, students, bus drivers, and Colombian citizens, blocking roads and clashing with police.
Close to 650 arrests were made, 485 injuries were reported, 12 people killed, and over 600 cases of human rights violations reported. Coverage of the nationwide protests feature rural peoples and urban demonstrators in the typical contest against body-armor clad, state riot police armed with gas, rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades and batons, beating people and dispersing women and children in clouds of smoke.
The popular uprising was the result of poor economic conditions coinciding with rising anger over agricultural law 9.70, passed in 2010, which officially made it illegal to share, trade, or sell native seedsamongst farmers, effectively criminalizing generations long traditions of local and small scale agriculture. A documentary film by Victoria Salano featuring footage of the destruction of stocks of native seeds by the government helped to inform the public and to catalyze the movement to suspend law 9.70.

“There have to be controls which govern our food sovereignty,” states Vélez. “We should control which seeds are introduced to the country and can harm local ones. We shouldn’t be persecuting the seeds which are native to our soil.” – German Alonso Vélez

The current system, in place for many years now, already forces farmers to annually purchase seed that is certified by the country’s agricultural institution, rather than allowing them to plant native seed, presenting a severe financial burden to small-scale cultivators. Law 9.70, however, expanded this tyranny by criminalizing the sharing and trading of native seeds, offering prison terms for this customary practice. This seems to have been the last straw for struggling farmers who are appalled to see their heritage criminalized and eradicated by their government working on behalf of international corporate interests.
The seed control policies are forcing farmers to plant genetically modified and patented seed, while ensuring dependence on foreign seed imports and imported pesticides, fertilizers and other chemicals. For a nation that has largely survived until now by using native seed, the lack of diversity in imported varieties means that hundreds of years of local agricultural development is being eradicated in exchange for an unaffordable farming system based on genetically modified products seen by many as having severe and wholly yet unknown health risks.
The reaction by such a large segment of the public is reflective of the concern over a looming food crisis, as well as growing public awareness of the practices of the monopolies governing Colombia’s food system. More people now understand the root cause of the issue, international free-trade agreements and pressure from agro-chemical giants, such as Monsanto, which put international corporations in dominion over small farmers by forcing them to buy imported products and services that have never before been needed. It is a usurpation of control over the most important segment of the economy, food.

“It’s no longer viable for a dairy farm to make ends meet with three cows. Unless there are profound structural changes to current development models, we will be totally dependent on monopolies for food.” – German Alonso Vélez

Implementation of seed control was described by Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos as ‘having Colombia tuned up to international reality.’ This statement is, of course, completely true. The trending international reality is exactly this, trojan horse conquest of national food sovereignty by means of international corporate/government treaties and agreements sponsored by international governing bodies and the bottomless coiffeurs of the companies that benefit directly from such trade agreements.
The shift to this international model of farming simply does not make economic or common sense for the people of most nations. Author and self-proclaimed ‘economic hitman’ John Perkins wrote about this type of imperial foreign occupation by corporate influence in his critical book, ‘Confessions of an Economic Hitman.’ It is the newest means of international conquest.

“If government controls the use of seeds, it controls what is planted, and what we end up eating.” – Richard Emblem

The international drive toward the monopolization of seed, the global reduction of seed diversity, and the abolishment of small scale farming is being seen all over the world. Earlier this year the European Union presented the ‘Plant Reproductive Material Law’ which originally aimed to limit the types of seeds an individual can plant in their own backyard gardens to those approved by a bureaucratic agency. In the United States, Roundup Ready alfalfa is ‘accidentally’ contaminating non-gmo acreage at such a pace that non-gmo alfalfa may soon become a thing of the past. Farmers are being driven out of business by the legal teams of large corporations, and local municipalities and homeowner’s associations are fining homeowners for their gardens, and in some shocking cases, local farms are being raided by SWAT teams for code violations and unsubstantiated rumors.
The war against sovereign food is happening right now, and the developments in Colombia serve as another example of the unnecessary and unfair stresses that the international corporate model of agricultural can put on a nation, it’s farmers and it’s economy. In opposition to this, worldwide there are campaigns to educate farmers about the realities of gmo-agriculture and also to inform the public of the other side of the issue which points to unknown and suspected health risks of consuming gmo foods, their dependence on toxic pesticides and herbicides, the high costs of buying seed each year, the loss of diversity.

“By privatizing our seeds we began eroding our agricultural autonomy.” – German Alonso Vélez

Most people simply don’t yet understand how important it is to retain food sovereignty, but this recent case from Colombia gives us insight how quickly this issue can reach critical mass. Some important conclusions that we can draw from thes recent events in Colombia are:

• Food is the most important and unifying social cause, and the primary issue to set offcivil unrest.

• National labor strikes are more effective than protest at forcing a dialogue on popular issues.

• Monsanto and the bio-tech giants are not invincible, and global momentum is gaining in opposition to this new model of international genetically modified and chemically dependent agriculture.

• The ‘free-trade’ model of achieving international conformity in agriculture is a new form of colonialism and empire building. It criminalizes traditional and everyday activities in order to render whole nations dependent on international imports.

• Grass roots media and documentary films are an exceptional means of educating people and exposing the corruption and insanity of this model of agriculture.

The Colombian government’s concession to suspend law 9.70 and release all of those detained in the protests is an important sign that people do still have a voice. This story is far from over and time alone will tell how this plays out, as it is unlikely that the corporations and nations which have standing agreements with Colombia will permit the Colombians to easily renege on any treaties.

“If Colombia is not careful in protecting its traditional farming methods, it could become 100 percent dependent on foreign grown foods, especially GMOs.” – German Alonso Vélez

Dylan Charles is a student and teacher of Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi and Qi Gong, a practitioner of Yoga and Taoist esoteric arts, and an activist and idealist passionately engaged in the struggle for a more sustainable and just world for future generations. He is the editor of WakingTimes.com, the proprietor ofOffgridOutpost.com, a grateful father and a man who seeks to enlighten and assist others with the power of inspiring information and action. He may be contacted at [email protected].
This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.
Sources:
http://thecitypaperbogota.com/features/defending-our-seeds/
http://www.nationofchange.org/all-about-new-eu-seed-law-1368022078
http://farmwars.info/?p=11539
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-september-12-2013/monsanto—seed-patent-laws
http://www.popularresistance.org/video-colombian-farmers-win-back-control-of-their-seeds-after-prolonged-strike/
http://sgtreport.com/2013/08/texas-swat-team-raids-organic-farm-for-no-reason/
Copyright: Global Research

Banks abandon mortgage preapprovals

What the decline of preapprovals means for homebuyers

The mortgage preapproval, for years a crucial step in the home-buying process, is losing its luster with lenders, new data shows.

A mortgage preapproval is a written commitment lenders give to buyers that states the maximum size home loan they can get as well as the likely interest rate. Buyers rely on preapprovals to make sure they’re shopping for a home that’s in their price range. But new federal data suggests lenders are scaling back on preapprovals. Among the top 25 mortgage lenders, just 29,912 preapprovals resulted in mortgages that borrowers received to purchase a home last year, according to data released last month by the Federal Financial Institutions Examinations Council. That’s down from 101,626 in 2007, before the housing downturn. Preapprovals accounted for 4% of purchase mortgages that were originated by these lenders last year, down from 9% in 2007.

The bank that rejects the most mortgages

In addition, preapprovals—which have traditionally been considered one of the first steps to getting a home loan—did not precede any of the mortgages doled out to home buyers by 14 of the largest 25 lenders last year. “The popularity of preapprovals is quite low,” says Mike Lyon, vice president of mortgage operations at Quicken Loans. (The mortgage lender had 598 preapprovals result in mortgages last year, down 43% from 2007, according to this government data.)

Andy Dean Photography / Shutterstock.com

The demise of the preapproval comes at a delicate time for home buyers. As competition heats up, bidding wars are becoming the norm; for prospective buyers to stand out to sellers, they often need to show proof that they have lined up financing and are ready to proceed with the transaction, says Jim Gaines, research economist at Texas A&M University’s Real Estate Center. Preapprovals provide that evidence to sellers, and buyers who lack them will have a hard time getting a home that has many offers on it. Preapprovals may also provide some leverage to buyers who are competing against all-cash buyers, who accounted for 32% of existing-home sales in August, up from 27% a year prior, according to the latest data from the National Association of Realtors. Because they don’t need a mortgage, all-cash buyers often make lower offers on homes; a home buyer with a higher offer and a preapproval could beat them out, says Gaines.

Bernanke gives home buyers a breather

To be sure, this government data may not encompass all preapprovals. The numbers are released under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, which requires lenders to submit their mortgage and preapproval numbers to the federal government. Some lenders say they don’t submit data for their preapprovals because they don’t meet the federal definition. The official criteria include a written commitment to give a home loan for a certain period of time, with the caveat that approval can change only for a few reasons including a change in the home buyer’s financial standing or some other conditions that could derail a sale, like a report of termites in the home.

Housing experts, however, say the decline in preapprovals is largely due to dwindling competition among mortgage lenders for new clients. Prior to the recession, lenders used preapprovals as way to attract would-be borrowers. Buyers who had this commitment from a lender were more likely to turn to this company when they were ready to get the actual mortgage, says Keith Gumbinger, vice president at mortgage-info site HSH.com. In that way, preapprovals became a revenue source for lenders. Since the recession, many lenders have shut down, and that has decreased competition for buyers, he says.

Separately, lower-than-expected appraisals of homes have resulted in fewer preapprovals, says Gumbinger. Preapprovals are usually given before buyers identify the home they want to buy. When the home’s appraisal is determined to be lower than the purchase price the buyer and seller agreed to, the lender often requires the buyer to come up with the extra cash to make up the difference; buyers who are unable or unwilling to do so walk away, and the preapproval ends up derailed.

Housing markets about to get squeezed

Several banks, including Chase and Bank of America, say rather than preapproving home buyers, they’re mostly doing pre-qualifications. With pre-qualifications, lenders inform borrowers of the size of the loan they can qualify for based on their stated income and assets as well as an initial credit check. Historically, pre-qualifications were the first step buyers would take before shopping, which was then followed by a preapproval when they became serious about a specific home they wanted to purchase.

To give buyers a better idea of where they stand, Chase says it provides a more detailed prequalification program through which buyers get a “conditional approval” that usually lasts 90 days, which they can share with the seller. The bank says this type of approval differs from the federal definition of a preapproval because it is not a written commitment; instead, its commitment is often delivered after verifying borrowers’ income, employment and the home’s appraisal. Similarly, a Bank of America spokesman says the bank wouldn't approve a buyer until the home is appraised and the borrower’s financial condition is fully vetted.

A prequalification doesn’t provide the same leverage to buyers though as an official preapproval. Pre-qualifications are typically based on average mortgage rates rather than the rate that’s close to what the borrower would actually get. Also, most lenders can rescind a prequalification, whereas a preapproval is a commitment that usually lasts two to three months.

 

Bill Clinton Says Americans Will Get Used to Communism

Former president Bill Clinton is running interference for President Obama and laying the groundwork for Hillary’s 2016 presidential bid. Here’s what he said about the future of the response of Americans to ObamaCare:

“I just think that when all these dire predictions don’t come out, if they don’t — I believe that pretty soon, within the next several years, this will be like Medicare and Medicaid. And it’ll be a normal part of our life. And people will be glad it’s there.”

I’m sure every political tyrant said something similar. I can hear Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Vladimir Lenin telling their people. “In time you’ll learn to love Communism.”

ObamaCare is like the early stages of communism. Communist ideology is all about equality. “From each according to his ability, to each according to their needs” is a slogan popularized by Karl Marx in 1875. Sounds so . . . fair. It reminds me of a scene in the film Dr. Zhivago where Omar Sharif’s character returns to his home and finds it overrun with people. Equality was achieved. Everybody had the same medical care, living space, food, and nutrition needs. They were all "equally" malnurished.

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago, Dr. Yrui Zhivago’s half brother and Communist Party member, after seeing Yuri pulling wood from a fence, made this remark:

“I told myself it was beneath my dignity to arrest a man for pilfering firewood. But nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man. And the party was right: one man desperate for a bit of fuel is pathetic; five million people desperate for fuel will destroy a city.”

300 million people brought under the control of the government for healthcare will bring our nation to its collective needs.

Communist revolutions bring changes dramatically, sometimes overnight. Creeping communism takes time. There are stages to it. The Social Security program was borrowed from the German Socialists. It was a major plank in Adolf Hitler’s platform to get the people comfortable with the belief that the government could make them secure. Hitler followed and implemented Bismarck’s program “that included compulsory insurance for workers against old age, sickness, accident and incapacity, and though organized by the State it was financed by employers and employees.”

As William Shirer writes in his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), it had “a profound influence on the working class in that it gradually made them value security over political freedom and caused them to see in the State, however conservative, a benefactor and protector.”

We eased into government healthcare with Medicare and Medicaid. The first people into the programs reaped the early benefits.

In the early years of Social Security, more than 30 people were paying in for every recipient. The pay-in costs were a total of $60 per year (employee and employer "contributions": two percent of $3000 per year. Now it’s more than 6 percent on around $110,000 per year with three people paying in for every one recipient. Something’s got to give.

We have no idea what ObamaCare is going to cost or its long-term consequences. Think Walter White and Breaking Bad. The taxes to pay for ObamaCare are mostly hidden, but they've got to be paid be somebody. But Bill Clinton is telling us that we’ll all get used to it. Of course, as an elitist with special privileges, he won't have to.

The Recession That Never Ended: 2008 -2013 (and Counting)

by Charles Hugh-Smith
The reality is that the recession never ended for 95% of U.S. households, and by many metrics the recession has deepened.
If you want to claim the 2008 recession ended, you have to find a metric that reflects “growth.” For instance, gross domestic product (GDP), which has expanded since 2009.

But as Lance Roberts, Gordon T. Long and I discuss in Is the US in a Recession? (43 min. video, 52 slides), this metric of “growth” is suspect on a number of counts. For example, does this chart of full-time employees relative to the population look expansionary?

Or how about this chart of median household income, which adjusted for inflation is down 7.2%?

Or how about real personal income less government personal transfers on a 5-year basis (the red line)? Notice that the red line only popped briefly above 0% into “growth” in late 2012 as those who could declared income in 2012 before the 1013 tax increases kicked in.

None of these charts is remotely expansionary. We can further question broad-based measures of expansion such as GDP statistically: in economies with high income/wealth inequality such as the U.S., the top 5%’s expansion of income and wealth creates an illusion that the entire workforce is doing better when the opposite is true.
If you doubt this, please examine this chart of income disparity. Note that the vast majority of income increases have accrued to the top 5%:

In other words, huge leaps in the income and wealth of the top 5% mask the decline of income and wealth of the bottom 95%. Average all wealth and income and it appears that the economy is expanding to the benefit of all, when it fact only the top 5% have escaped the recession; the recession never ended for the bottom 95%.

An even better way to create an illusory expansion is to simply not measure trends that would reveal a deepening recession. For example, what percentage of student loans are purposefully taken out as a substitute for income, i.e. used to pay basic living expenses rather than education? Anecdotally, there is plentiful evidence that a great many people are signing up for one class at the local community college in order to get a student loan to live on.
Is it any wonder that student loan default rates are soaring? The people taking out student loans just to get by have no means to make payments once the loan money is consumed.
Is an economy of people obtaining student loans they have no way to service as the only available means to keep themselves off the street a healthy economy?
Correspondent B.C. recently sent some statistics on housing and the Millennial Generation’s jobs/work/earnings prospects. (For example, household_formation)
Age 20-34:
Headship rate: 36% (percentage who are heads of households)
Full-time employment: 44%
Unemployment: 8-13%
Persons per household: 2.72
Participation rate: 76% (the number of people who are counted as participating in the economy)
How many people 34 and under qualify for a non-subsidized home mortgage? That is, how many qualify under traditional rules (income = 3 X mortgage payments, 20% down payment in cash, etc.) How many people in this age group can possibly qualify for a conventional mortgage when only 44% have full-time jobs?
Is an economy in which people in their 30s cannot find full-time work or afford to buy a house a non-recessionary economy?

The reality is that the recession never ended for 95% of U.S. households, and by many metrics the recession has deepened. The trick is to not measure those metrics; what isn’t measured doesn’t exist, especially recession.
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