REUTERS
"U.S. job growth picks up, desperate employers boost wages to attract workers"
Lucia Mutikani
June 4, 2021
This bodes well for consumer spending, which could also get a powerful tailwind from the more than $2.3 trillion in excess savings amassed during the pandemic.
REUTERS
"U.S. retail sales take step back as spending pivots to services, trend remains strong"
Lucia Mutikani
June 15, 2021
Even with the boost from stimulus checks fading, consumption could get a powerful tailwind from the at least $2.3 trillion in excess savings amassed by households during the pandemic.
REUTERS
"U.S. retail sales surprise to upside in strong boost to economy"
By Lucia Mutikani
September 16, 2021
Americans are sitting on at least $2.5 trillion in excess savings accumulated during the pandemic.
What is Jerome Powell's net worth?
Powell is one of the wealthiest Federal Reserve chairs in history.
His net worth is currently estimated to be between $17 and $55 million, according to financial disclosure documents at the time of his nomination as chair in 2019.
CNBC
"Powell orders ethics review after Fed presidents disclosed multimillion-dollar investments"
Thomas Franck @TOMWFRANCK
PUBLISHED THU, SEP 16 2021
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell directed staff to review the central bank’s ethics rules for appropriate financial activities after disclosures that several senior central bank officials made multiple multimillion-dollar stock trades in 2020, while others held significant investments.
Last week, financial disclosures filed by the Fed’s 12 regional presidents revealed some had actively traded in 2020, while others held million-dollar financial positions without making changes to their portfolios.
Powell ordered the review “because the trust of the American people is essential for the Federal Reserve to effectively carry out our important mission,” the spokesman said.
Documents released last week revealed that Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan made multiple trades worth $1 million or more last year in individual stocks including Apple, Amazon and Delta Air Lines.
Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren held stakes in four real estate investment trusts and several purchases and sales of similar property-owning vehicles, according to filings.
He also held stock in Pfizer, Chevron and AT&T.
Even the appearance of self-dealing at the Fed could prove problematic to an institution tasked with the impartial oversight of U.S. employment and inflation.
The trades quickly came under scrutiny given the Fed’s critical role in managing the U.S. economy as well as its influence over interest rates and liquidity markets.
The Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing recession magnified the Fed’s power in 2020.
Congress allows the Fed, with the Treasury Department’s approval, to embark on a wide range of emergency lending measures to flush the economy with cash during times of crisis.
Separately, Warren sent letters to all of the Fed’s regional bank presidents demanding tighter restrictions on the type of financial activity officials can engage in.
“As the Fed took extraordinary actions to address the risks to the economy and the banking and financial systems from the COVID-19 pandemic, you and your colleague Eric Rosengren made extensive trades in individual stocks and real estate investment trusts,” Warren wrote in her letter to Kaplan.
That trading, she added, “has prompted concerns about conflicts of interest among high-level officials with far-reaching policymaking influence and extraordinary access to information about the economy.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/16/fed-chi ... rades.html
BRIEFING ROOMTHE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR JUNE 1, 2021 AT 6:11 PM
And going back to the transcript from Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress on 28 April 2021, we have Joe speaking to not only America and the world, but the universe, as well, and saying thusly, to wit:
Madame Speaker.
Madame Vice President.
The First Lady.
The Second Gentleman.
My fellow Americans,
While the setting tonight is familiar, this gathering is very different – a reminder of the extraordinary times we are in.
As I stand here tonight — just one day shy of the 100th day of my administration.
100 days since I took the oath of office, lifted my hand off our family Bible, and inherited a nation in crisis.
The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
end quotes
And my goodness, people, of course it would have to be the worst one, because if it wasn’t, think how much less majestic and heroic Joe would seem, not to mention not having an excuse to loot several TRILLION dollars from the U.S. treasury with which to reward his followers.
So, how did those in Joe’s inner circle fare during this GREAT HUGE RECESSION?
Like the common person in America, did they too see their fortunes depleted?
Or was the GREAT HUGE RECESSION actually good to them?
For a look at what that answer might be, let’s go to an ABC News story entitled “Obama-era officials return to White House worth millions – White House financial disclosures show several officials gained massive wealth” by Soo Rin Kim and Libby Cathey on March 21, 2021, where we learn as follows about the inner circle of THE CULT OF JOE, to wit:
As several Obama-era officials return to the White House under President Joe Biden, their reunion comes with fuller pockets and deeper ties to corporate interests, new financial disclosure reports show.
According to ABC News’ analysis of the most recent disclosure reports, many of Biden’s top White House officials, including Chief of Staff Ron Klain, Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese, and coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients, have substantially multiplied their wealth over the past few years.
end quotes
And seriously, people, in a world finally gone right for a change, isn’t that the way it really should be, that those in the top echelons of government over us should not be poor like us, but should instead be flush with cash?
How else, afterall, could we respect them if they weren’t special?
Getting back to the story, it goes on as follows:
Rice, who is among the wealthiest members of the Biden White House team, dramatically increased her wealth since her previous White House job during the Obama administration, reporting between $36 million and $149 million in various assets in her new disclosure filing released Saturday morning.
That’s nearly three to four times the amount she reported back in 2009, when she joined the Obama administration as the ambassador to the United Nations.
Back then she reported total wealth between $13.6 million and $40.4 million, and the figure didn’t increase dramatically when she served as President Barack Obama’s national security advisor during his second term.
In her most recent filing, Rice reported holding shares worth between $250,000 and $5 million in major corporations including Johnson & Johnson, Apple and Microsoft.
She also had a significant amount of stock options in Netflix, where she served as a board member, and reported earning more than $300,000 from exercising Netflix stock options in the past year.
In addition, she reported shares in several oil and gas industry companies, including $1 million to $5 million of holdings in the Canadian multinational natural gas distribution company Enbridge Inc.
Rice, who served as the president of her author and speaking business SERice LLC, earned roughly $620,000 from various corporate and academic speaking engagements in the past year, and $250,000 from book royalties, with her total income from the past year amounting to between $2 million and $6.7 million.
ABC News has not yet obtained Rice’s ethics agreement, so it’s not yet clear if she has or will divest from her assets in private companies or recuse herself from matters related to those companies — except for her stock options in Netflix, which she said in her disclosure report that she’ll be divesting.
end quotes
So the GREAT HUGE RECESSION that wiped the fortunes of a lot of common ordinary people was actually pretty kind to Susan Rice, which takes us back to the story as follows:
“These White House officials are experienced government leaders whose past private sector experience is part of a broad and diverse skill set they bring to government service,” a White House spokesperson told ABC News in a statement.
“They have returned to government because of their deep commitment to public service, their desire to help bring our nation out of this time of crisis, and their strong belief that government can work for the American people.”
end quotes
And isn’t that enough to have us all weeping with joy, people, and feeling good about ourselves and all warm and squishy inside, the thought that these really rich people have such love and devotion for us that they would come back and serve us as our public servants because they have such a strong belief that government can actually work for the American people, instead of for their pockets?
Let’s go back to the story and see who else in the Biden administration the GREAT HUGE RECESSION has blessed, to wit:
Klain, a longtime adviser to Biden, has also tripled his wealth since 2009, a comparison of his past and new disclosures shows.
When he joined the Obama administration in 2009 as Biden’s chief of staff, Klain reported owning between $1.4 million and $3.5 million in assets, and he now enters the Biden administration with between $4.4 million and $12.2 million in various assets.
Much of Klain’s wealth comes from various assets related to his employment.
In 2020 he received nearly $2 million in salary from the venture capital firm Revolution LLC, where he was executive vice president and general counsel, compared to $1 million he reported receiving in salary in his filing from early 2009.
end quotes
Joe figures that if you really want some very smart people to help Joe help out the poor folks in this troubled and sick nation, it is best to get some really well-off people with a lot of money because it is they who know what is best for the poor folks to help them along, so to speak, which brings us back to the story, as follows:
Zients is the single wealthiest Biden administration official that had disclosed assets as of Saturday evening, surpassing Vanita Gupta, Biden’s nominee for associate attorney general, in his total assets.
Zients reported owning between $89.3 million and $442.8 million in assets, including various investment funds, real estate properties and cash shares.
He has divested his shares in his private investment firm, Cranemere Group, as well as $1 million worth of shares in Facebook, where he has served as a board member.
He reported making between $10.4 million and $28 million in income in the past year, including his seven-figure salary from his investment firm, as well as other several seven-figure assets he has divested from.
His total wealth has more than doubled since he first joined the Obama White House as the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget in 2009, when he reported assets between $45.2 million and $205.7 million.
end quotes
Aren’t we truly blessed, people, to have such people as these helping Joe Biden to help us all and get us back on our feet?
And my goodness, who else among the Biden-ista inner circle has been blessed with good fortune by the GREAT HUGE RECESSION?
How about everybody’s most favorite white house mouthpiece:
In her disclosure report, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki reported receiving a communications consulting fee from Zients in excess of $5,000 — though the report has no further details on the transaction.
Her assets have also grown significantly since her first White House job during the Obama administration.
In 2009, Psaki had reported between $32,000 and $130,000 in assets and $125,000 in income, but in 2021 she reported her wealth had increased at least tenfold, to up to $1.5 million in assets with an annual income of roughly $647,742.
Much of her income from the past year came from Evergreen Consulting LLC, which she founded, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank.
She also worked as a CNN contributor and an adviser to WestExec, a consulting firm founded in 2017 by current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, at which several Obama-era officials worked.
In addition to the $5,000 Zients paid her, she was paid the same consulting fee by Lyft, among a handful of other companies.
end quotes
And really, people, is there anyone more deserving of that good fortune than Jen Psaki, because without her dedication to us, we would have no clue whatsoever as to what was actually going on in Washington, which again takes us back to the story of the members of the inner circle of the CULT OF JOE, to wit:
Deese’s wealth has also multiplied dramatically since 2009, when he took his first White House job as Obama’s special assistant for economic policy.
In 2015, just a few months into his role as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Deese reported owning between $81,000 and $215,000 in assets — but now, as a member of the Biden administration, he’s reported between $2 million and $7.2 million in assets.
Prior to joining the Biden administration, Deese made $2.3 million in salary from the investment firm BlackRock as the Global Head of Sustainable Investing, compared to the $175,000 in salary he received during his last year as Obama’s deputy OMB director.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, the White House deputy chief of staff, was paid consulting fees by General Electric, Lyft, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Gates Ventures, among others, as clients of Precision Strategies, a marketing agency in which she was a founding partner.
She reported between $2.2 million to $4.7 million in assets on her disclosure form and more than $800,000 in income in the past year, which includes $426,067 deferred compensation and severance from Precision Strategies, on top of $50,000 in salary from the firm.
She also made more than $110,000 as Beto O’Rourke’s campaign manager before becoming Biden’s campaign manager at a salary of over $190,000.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s current national security adviser, is another multimillionaire, reporting assets between $7.5 million and $27.5 million held with his spouse, Margaret Goodlander, a former law clerk to now-Attorney General Judge Merrick Garland.
Much of his wealth comes from a long list of residential and commercial real estate properties scattered throughout Florida and New Hampshire, and he also reported holding five- to six-figure dollars’ worth of shares in private companies including Abbott Labs, American Express, Facebook, FedEx, Google, Merck, Visa and Verizon.
Sullivan’s salary from the consulting firm Macro Advisory Partners in the past year was $138,000, and his corporate consulting clients included Uber, LEGO, MasterCard and Standard Chartered Bank.
He also held academic positions at Yale and Dartmouth.
In first lady Jill Biden’s office, chief of staff Julissa Reynoso was a partner at the law firm of Winston & Strawn, where she made more than $1.5 million last year with a $150,000 bonus.
She reported between $4.1 million and $14.8 million in assets, and made up to $1.9 million in total income in the past year, including income from rental properties in New York and Miami as well as commercial properties in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Henderson, North Carolina, among others.
She also listed a vacant beachfront property in the Dominican Republic on her disclosure form.
end quotes
And there we have it, people, fortune shines down on the fortunate, does it not?
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ent-359615
Remarks by President Biden on the Economy
SEPTEMBER 16, 2021
East Room
2:00 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon.
I want to start by thanking the House committees for working hard this week to advance critical components of the economic plan that I’ve put before the Congress.
I know we still have a long way to go, but I’m confident that Congress will deliver to my desk both the bipartisan physical infrastructure plan and the Build Back Better plan that I have proposed.
And I’ve said many times before: I believe we’re at an inflection point in this country — one of those moments where the decisions we’re about to make can change — literally change the trajectory of our nation for years and possibly decades to come.
Each inflection point in this nation’s history represents a fundamental choice.
I believe that America, at this moment, is facing such a choice.
And the choice is this: Are we going to continue with an economy where the overwhelming share of the benefits go to big corporations and the very wealthy?
Or are we going to take this moment right now to set this country on a new path — one that invests in this nation; creates real, sustained economic growth; and that benefits everyone, including working people and middle-class folks?
That’s something we haven’t realized in this country for decades.
The data — (clears throat) — excuse me.
The data is absolutely clear.
Over the past 40 years, the wealthy have gotten wealthier, and too many corporations have lost their sense of responsibility to their workers, their communities, and the country.
Just look at the facts.
CEOs used to make about 20 times the average worker in the company that they ran.
Today, they make more than 350 times what the average worker in their corporation makes.
Since the pandemic began, billionaires have seen their wealth go up by $1.8 trillion.
That is, everyone who was a billionaire before the pandemic began, the total accumulated wealth beyond the billions they already had has gone up by $1.8 trillion.
Simply not fair.
And it’s — how is it possible that 55 of the largest corporations in this country paid zero dollars in federal income taxes?
They made over $40 billion in the year 2020, and they’ve paid zero.
Think about that.
Zero dollars in federal taxes on $40 billion in profits.
How is it possible that the wealthiest billionaires in the country can entirely escape paying income tax on what they’ve made?
How is it possible for millionaires and billionaires that can pay a lower rate of tax than teachers, firefighters, or law enforcement officers?
TO BE CONTINUED ...