Meltdown: THE HARD FACTS

"Hard Facts" from CBC's Meltdown Series:

• Half of America owns only 2.5% of country's wealth. The top 1% owns a third of it.
• The gap between the top 0.01% and everyone else hasn't been this bad since the Roaring Twenties.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheque to the average worker's paycheque was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
• In 2008, the total national household debt in Canada has reached an all-time high of$1.3 trillion. A survey found that 42% of respondents said their personal debt was rising in the past three years, and 21%said they couldn't manage their debt.
• 61% of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49% in 2008 and 43% in 2007. The numbers are similar in Canada.
• A staggering 43% of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.

• In 2008, the World Economic Forum rated Canada's banking system No. 1 in the world. The U.S. came in right behind — Namibia.
• It is being projected that the U.S. government will have a budget deficit of approximately1.6 trillion dollars in 2010. How much is that? If you went out and spent one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars.
• In February 2010, there were 5.5 unemployed Americans for every job opening.
• In California’s Central Valley, 1 out of every 16 homes is in some phase of foreclosure.
• U.S. banks repossessed nearly 258,000 homes nationwide in the first quarter of 2010, a35% jump from the first quarter of 2009.
• In May 2009, the number of Canadians getting regular employment insurance benefits in reached 778,700, the highest level on comparable records going back 12 years. During the month, the number of people getting EI benefits grew by 9.2%, from April.
• More than 24% of all homes with mortgages in the United States were underwater (the mortgage is more than the current market value of the home) as of the end of 2009.

• This recession has erased 8 million private sector jobs in the United States.
• 39.68 million Americans are now on food stamps, which represents a new all-time record. But things look like they are going to get even worse. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is forecastingthat enrollment in the food stamp program will exceed 43 million Americans in 2011.
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average just experienced the worst May it has seen since 1940.
• If you only make the minimum payment each and every time, a $6,000 credit card bill can end up costing you over $30,000 (depending on the interest rate).
• Approximately 21% of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
• In 2010 the U.S. government is projected to issue almost as much new debt as the rest of the governments of the world combined.
• In 2009, U.S. banks posted their sharpest decline in private lending since 1942.
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• During the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans that are at least three months past due in the United States increased for the 16th consecutive quarter.
• As of February 2009, there were 111,500 employees working in motor vehicle assembly and parts, down 37% from its peak in 2001, according to a Stats Canada report.
• According to a Pew Research Center study, approximately 37% of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 have either been unemployed or underemployed at some point during the recession.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.

Source: CBC