The Middle Class Getting Poorer in Florida

Interest.com released an affordability study to examine housing markets. Tampa's medium income is $45,880. Tampa rated a D+ in paycheck power in 2012, 2013 and 2014. Tampa is the lowest rated city in the study. Miami is the second lowest rating city for medium income.

The Tampa Bay Times has an infographic of the jobs Gov. Rick Scott promised to deliver from giving companies tax incentives. Colt's Manufacturing currently has no people in their manufacturing building. Global Voter Solutions has declared bankruptcy. GVS was involved in a scandal using illegal voting software. Several states rejected the faulty Diebold machines GVS used.

Evolution was given a $100,000 tax credit from the state of Florida. Evolution has produced zero jobs in Florida. The list goes on.

Income inequality is increasing in Florida. All the gains from 2009 to 2011 went to the top 1 percent in Florida.

The report found Florida is one of 26 states in which all income growth from 2009 to 2011 went to the top 1 percent. While the average income of the top 1 percent in Florida rose 9.2 percent in that period, the remaining 99 percent saw its average income fall 2.4 percent. Robert Trigaux reports:

Just to break into the 1 percent bracket in Florida requires an annual income of $336,935. To enter the more elite 0.1 percent in Florida requires an income of $8,659,187.

Bottom line? In the Florida economy, the report says, the top 1 percent average of $1.14 million income is 32.2 times greater than that of the other 99 percent. Only Fortune 500-rich New York and Connecticut, home to many Wall Streeters and other highly paid workers, reported a larger disparity in income ratio.

This thread isn't going to change with the McJobs in Florida anytime soon.

A Second Wave of the Housing Crisis

In a recent episode of NPR's Planet Money podcast, Jacob Goldstein explains why housing prices are set to spiral farther downwards. Goldstein used a figure that, until the broadcast, I hadn't heard of: a monthly statistic estimating the amount of time it would take to sell all the homes currently on the market.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Despite this months it would take to sell all homes figure being at historic lows, Goldstein says the housing market will see more glut because of a "huge, looming wave of foreclosures coming down the pipeline in the next year or two". But foreclosures of sub-prime mortgages which caused the housing crisis, and recession which followed, already happened, right? What else is there to worry about?

But there is a second wave of mortgage foreclosures coming. In December, 2008, 60 Minutes explained that mortgages riskier than sub-prime were made after the sub-prime ones. Many of these mortgages are referred to as "NINJA loans" -- no income, no job, no assests.

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Well then, no wonder the only people who think stimulus worked are Obama's wimpy Democrat brown nosers -- whose noses are too occupied with other activities to sniff a whiff of reality.

Marco Rubio & Paul Singer BFF

Paul Singer is the CEO of Elliott Asset Management. Singer once told a room of 325 hedge fund managers to buy naked credit default swaps. The swaps are used as insurance against mortgage-backed securities. For example: if BP bought swaps to insure themselves against the Deep Horizon rig not generating oil revenue; the value of the swaps would increase. The financial industry got credit swap crazy. AIG could not pay for $440 billion in CDS. Singer did better. Elliott Asset Management used CDS to bet on the housing market to falter.

Nothing was more predictable, in Singer's view, than the collapse of the market for mortgage-backed bonds. ``One powerful measure of attractiveness of a trade is when there is the potential to make outsized gains for very little risk,'' he says.

Singer has earned the label as the King of vulture funds. Singer will buy bonds from poor countries knowing these nations will have a difficult time paying. Singer's company bought $10 million in bonds from the the Republic of Congo. Singer sued the Republic of Congo for $400 million. A settlement of $127 million was reached.

Singer was also one of the financial backers behind the Swift Boat attacks against Sen. John Kerry. Unsurprisingly, Singer avoids interviews and being photographs. Singer does make friends. His new BFF is Senate candidate Marco Rubio. Singer held a glitzy New York City fundraiser for Rubio and other Republicans. It is nice to know Rubio is a pal with a man who made money off of the housing market crash.

Obama Weekly Youtube Address

President-elect Barack Obama discusses growing unemployment and the housing crisis.