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Here are some sobering excerpts from a March 13, 2009 Wall Street Journal piece entitled "Americans See 18% of Wealth Vanish" by S. Mitra Kalita:

"The wealth of American families plunged nearly 18% in 2008, erasing years of sharp gains on housing and stocks and marking the biggest loss since the Federal Reserve began keeping track after World War II. The Fed said Thursday that U.S. households' net worth tumbled by $11 trillion -- a decline in a single year that equals the combined annual output of Germany, Japan and the U.K. The data signal the end of an epoch defined by first and second homes, rising retirement funds and ever-fatter portfolios. Past downturns have been mere blips compared with the losses Americans faced last year, which set them back to below 2004 levels..."

"...In all, the net worth of U.S. households stood at $51.48 trillion at the end of 2008, the Fed data showed. Besides being down 17.9% from a year earlier, it was down 9% just from the third quarter. The net-worth figure encompasses all of families' assets -- housing, stocks, personal property -- minus their total debts. Americans' assets have taken further hits in the first two months of 2009, a period not covered in the quarterly report. Although stocks have risen for three straight days, they remain down roughly 16% since the fourth quarter, when Americans' portfolios of stocks and mutual funds were worth $8.76 trillion. The national median home price, meanwhile, was $170,300 in January, down nearly 15% from a year earlier...."

The entire article is here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123687371369308675.html

Also, here is an excellent presentation of the distribution of wealth in America:

http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/so11/stratification/income&wealth.htm

The shocking realization here is that, apparently, the bottom 40% of the households (that encompasses approximately 120 million people out of a total population of approximately 306 million people) in the United States have, for all practical purposes, no wealth (one-fifth of one percent).

And I guess their objective now is pretty straightforward:

Just try to stay afloat.

- Ed Smith, Publisher
The EHS Letter Manual