Monday, August 24, 2015

American households just saw $1.8 trillion in wealth vanish as stocks plummet

"I will say that China’s markets still are pretty much separated from world markets. They’re, obviously, moving towards being more integrated, but right now they’re not. So you’re not going to, I don’t think, see the direct linkage there." ~ Jack Lew, Obama's Treasury Secretary, 7/10/15

"THE HELL YOU SAY!" ~ NYSE, 8/24/15
Looks like the roller coaster ride is here (again)...
AP: U.S. stocks slumped again Monday, with the Dow Jones industrial average plunging more than 1,000 points at one point in a sell-off that sent a shiver of fear from Wall Street to Main Street.

Stocks regained some of that ground as the day wore on, but the Dow Jones industrial average finished the day down 588 points. The slump - part of a global wave of selling triggered by the slowdown in China - reflected uncertainty among investors over where to put their money when the world's second-largest economy is in a slide.

MarketWatch: Wall Street suffered one of its most volatile sessions in years Monday, with the Dow industrials plunging more than 1,000 points in the opening minutes, bouncing back to recover most of the losses and then fading into the final bell to record the biggest drop in four years.
All these years of dependence on and borrowing from China, and they've been inflating their numbers. Here's putting the last few trading days losses in perspective: American households just saw $1.8 trillion in wealth vanish.
MarketWatch: You may have seen headlines to describe the market carnage like a trillion dollar’s worth of wealth wiped away in a single day. But it’s worth noting just how much is held by Americans in the stock market in the first place.

MarketWatch took a look at the Federal Reserve’s financial accounts of the United States report for answers — and did some back-of-the-envelope math.

As of March 31, households and nonprofits held $24.1 trillion in stocks. That’s both directly, and through mutual funds, pension funds and the like. That also includes the holdings of U.S.-based hedge funds, though you’d have to think that most hedge funds are held by households.

Using the Dow Jones Total Stock Market index DWCF, -3.94% through midmorning trade, that number had dropped to $22.32 trillion.

In other words, a cool $1.8 trillion has been lost between now and the first quarter — and overwhelmingly, those losses occurred in the last few days. This will probably be the worst quarter for stock-market destruction since the third quarter of 2011, when $2.8 trillion was wiped away.

It took four quarters for the stock market to bake that wealth back into equities.
The crony corporatists, the WallStreet hedgers, all intertwined in the statist Leviathan of Big Government's Keynesian economics (i.e., Obamanomics) down the crapper. Of course, the titans will land on their feet when it's everybody else's money that's being flushed away with manufacturing, jobs, employment, savings and retirement...and somehow it'll still be Bush's fault.

Related links: Stock markets slide after China’s ‘Black Monday’
The Stock Market is tanking this morning, Donald Trump says US needs to get SMART
Why China's Economy is Scaring the World, Explained in 90 Seconds
Fresh Off 17 Day Vacation, Obama Flies Out This Morning To Las Vegas Fundraiser
The Obama Economy Calls to Clinton and Biden

ADDENDUM: Levin explains how it's not just about China...
"The only thing that has been growing with fake dollars, thanks to the Federal Reserve, is the stock market. Nothing else has been growing. Jobs aren't growing; housing market's not growing. Nothing's growing, and now the stock market's in trouble, not because of China, because the Federal Reserves out of control, because Obama's out of control, because the bureaucracy's out of control, because Congress is out of control. They won't put the breaks on this profligate, unconscionable, immoral spending! They won't get out of the way of the private economy."