I had a couple days off and spent a couple hours each day in front of the TV watching the financial/stock market channels.

It appears American commerce and industry is doing really well. Corporations have RECORD amounts of cash on their balance sheets. This is probably due to "lean and mean" approaches, they've found their pricing and staffing points on the economic charts, cash flow is very positive, with little need to ramp up production there is no need to spend that much on capital improvement.

Despite the wonderful state of things for the corps, the stock market just chugs along with minimal returns or advances. That seems to be attributed to the gloomy outlook of things for the common man (and despite the good state of affairs for the corps), and secondarily because there are not a lot of buyers in the market, lots of folks have redesignated their 401ks and 403bs toward cash, annuities, and bonds vs. stocks.

All of which reinforces what I've heard elsewhere. Things are not that bad for most of us, but crazy bad for the "bottom" 15-18% of society.

The new casino in Wayland has 70,000 apps on file for their 1300 projected jobs for instance. That tells me there are a lot of people that need a job. Not new news, right? But unless the corps decide to start spending their cash reserves or switch to an expansionist business model, there is isn't much hope of that happening anytime soon.

If government can't stimulate, and corps don't see a REASON to stimulate (they are mostly in great shape the way things are), where is there any hope for change?

Well we know the Tea Baggers aren't in that "bottom" 15-18% of society because they're b*tching about black racism and fiscal deficits instead of JOBS JOBS JOBS JOBS.

One thing to note is what's called "top line misses".

What that means is many companies are having higher than expected earnings on lower than expected revenues. That means companies are spending less on labor and R&D to meet expectations, which is part of the job creation problem.

All I know is that I'm sick and tired of being poor. The Golden Years were supposed to be happy ones.