INCREDIBLE FACTS ABOUT THE U.S. ECONOMY

1. When Barack Obama entered the White House, the U.S. government was 10.6 trillion dollars in debt.  Today, the U.S. government is 19.5 trillion dollars in debt, and Obama still has several months to go until the end of his second term.  That means that an average of more than 1.1 trillion dollars a year will be added to the national debt during his presidency 
2. As Obama prepares to leave office, the rate at which the U.S. is  adding to the national debt is actually increasing.  During the fiscal year that is just ending, the U.S. government has added another 1.36 trillion dollars to the national debt.
3. It isn’t just the U.S. federal government that is on a massive debt binge.  Total U.S. corporate debt has nearly doubled since the end of 2007.
4. Default rates on U.S. corporate debt are the highest that they have been since the last financial crisis.
5. Corporate profits have fallen for five quarters in a row, and it is being projected that it will be six in a row once the final numbers for the third quarter come in.
6. During the month of August, commercial bankruptcy filings were up 29 percent compared to the same period a year ago.
7. The rate of new business formation in the United States dropped dramatically during the last recession and has hovered at that new lower level ever since.
8. The Wall Street Journal says that this is the weakest “economic recovery” since 1949.
9. Barack Obama is on track to be the only president of all of U.S. history to never have a single year when the U.S. economy grew by at least 3 percent.
10. In August, the Cass Freight Index dipped to the lowest level for that month since 2010.  What this means is that the total amount of stuff being shipped around the country by air, by rail and by truck is really dropping, and this is a clear sign that real economic activity is slowing down in a major way.
11. Capital expenditure growth has turned negative, and history has shown that this is almost always followed by a new recession.
12. The percentage of Americans with a full-time job has been sitting at about 48 percent since 2010.  You have to go back to 1983 to find a time when full-time employment in the U.S. was so low.
13. The labor force participation rate peaked in 1997 and has been steadily falling ever since.
14. The “inactivity rate” for men in their prime working years is actually higher today than it was during the last recession.
15. The United States has lost more than five million manufacturing jobs since the year 2000 even though the population has become much larger over that time frame.
16. The total number of government employees now outnumbers the total number of manufacturing employees in the United States by almost 10 million.
17. The median incomes have fallen in more than 80 percent of the major metropolitan areas in the U.S.  since the year 2000.
18. 51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.
19. The rate of homeownership in the U.S. has fallen every single year while Barack Obama has been in the White House.
20. Approximately one out of every five young adults are currently living with their parents.
21. The auto loan debt bubble recently surpassed the one trillion dollar mark for the first time ever.
22. Auto loan delinquencies are at the highest level that we have seen since the last recession.
23. In 1971, 61 percent of all Americans were considered to be “middle class”, but now middle class Americans have actually become a minority in this nation.
24. One recent survey discovered that 62 percent of all Americans have less than $1,000 in savings.
25. According to the Federal Reserve, 47 percent of all Americans could not even pay an unexpected $400 emergency room bill without borrowing the money from somewhere or selling something.
26. The number of New Yorkers sleeping in homeless shelters just set a brand new record high, and the number of families permanently living in homeless shelters is up a whopping 60 percent over the past five years.

Conclusion

The top 5% of households that dominate government, Corporate America, finance, the Deep State (the military-industrial complex, intelligence community, Wall Street ) and and the media have been doing extraordinarily well during the past eight years. So they report that the economy has been doing splendidly well because they have done splendidly.

Reports say that the U.S. economy is doing phenomenally well in the current slow-growth  generating record corporate profits, record highs in the S&P 500 stock index, and historically low unemployment (4.9% in July 2016). 

While GDP growth is somewhat lackluster by historical standards—less than 2% in 2016—it's growth nonetheless. And the rate of consumer-price inflation is hovering around 1%; negligible by historical standards. But this uniformly positive statistical view of the U.S. economy raises a question among those not in the top 0.1%: Whether it's struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living, a 0% return on savings, working longer hours while real wages stagnate, scrimping to pay back education loans, despairing at the abuses of power in the banking and political systems, or lamenting the loss of nourishing social interaction in the increasingly isolated and digital lifestyle — most "regular" people find their own personal experiences to be at odds with the rosy "Everything is awesome!" narrative trumpeted by the media.