Americans Dipping Into Savings And Using Credit To Survive

This week Bush gave a glowing overblown speecch to Wall Street praising how much money a few corporations in big business are raking in, while new reports prove that average Americans now have negative savings and are dipping into savings or using credit to survive. In the last ten years, the average American household amount of credit debt has steadily increased from around $3,000 to over $9,100.

And while some on Wall Street are becoming very rich, with record oil company revenues that are sometimes equal to $75,000 a minute in profits, another report on American manufacturing proves a decline in January, and signals a possible manufacturing recession and more worker layoffs to come in the coming months.

OPEC is again cutting back on oil production with oil again hovering at the $58 dollar a barrel level, up significantly from the sharp drop from a high of $77 earlier in the year to the low of a little over $50 a barrel only weeks ago. High oil prices and other problems have seemed to permanently damage the last two remaining American automobile manufacturers and left January auto sales at GM down around 16%, down at Ford about 18%, down at German owned Daimler Chrysler about 2%, but Toyota sales are up a healthy 9.1%. With at least three hybrid auto lines as well as many other highly economical and well built automobiles, Toyota has been best able to take good advantage of a perception that American cars are not as economical or well built, although the quality of American built cars continues to improve along with the fuel economy. Many American jobs and the overall health of the middle class depends on the health of the American automobile industry.

About the only saving grace this week was Bush being critical of some excessive CEO salaries. Perhaps some of the $200 million dollar CEO retirement compensation deals are a bit too much for even Bush, our first business MBA president.

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