Looking at some statistics today is staggering when it comes to impacting the middle class in America. Families once thriving and not even giving thoughts to any danger of not having enough money to meet just basic needs was just not part of their thought process. Yet today many are trapped in an unforgiving downturn that has literally turned their once comfortable lifestyle into a nightmare.

Now we see one in five Americans or 20 percent unemployed or underemployed. Those underemployed are now just scraping to keep things afloat.

15 percent can no longer make their minimum payment on their credit card. This is expected to rise.

One in every 8 Americans are on food stamps or are in default of their mortgages. The two most basic needs of food and shelter are under economic attack.

Over 120,000 are filing for bankruptcy monthly with health care costs continuing to be the number one reason for filing.

Over 50 milliohm people (and counting) have no health care insurance. People continue to lose their jobs and insurance while those hat need it most are denied due to pre-existing conditions. Pretty crazy stuff denying care to the most needy.

The economic crisis has wiped out over 5 trillion dollars from pensions, investments and savings. Talk about vaporizing consumer spending.

Collectively these numbers threaten to put ten million homeowners out on the street?

Yet the industries that formulated an economic coup in this country and got away with it continue their heist in plain site? Here we see an industry based on a house of cards creating worthless derivatives and insuring them to get double bang for their buck. Creating financial instruments of toxic assets knowingly and passing them on to other institutions. Packaging up loans utilizing exaggerated assessments, getting their cuts for these created mortgages and passing them on dead on arrival. It was legal loan sharking at its very worst. And so as the toxic market bloated with these worthless equity instruments these finally came crashing down. It is this industry that has created the biggest down turn since the great depression. Because of all of the toxic waste out there, credit dried up, and things began crashing down.

One of the biggest reasons things continue to be at a standstill is banks are still not extending credit. If you can’t get credit you simply can not expand your business or worst yet, expand consumer spending which unfortunately now makes up 70 percent of the GNP?
And yet when this creative banking triggered this economic crisis, they came to us to fix it with a hand out. It was simply either pay up, or everything is going to hit the fan…give us some more money or there will be zero to borrow, the credit market will freeze up and you’ll see a depression like you never seen before.. Of course, the top executives will keep their jobs and bonuses. It doesn’t matter that tax dollars that supported their bailout came largely from middle class families. Yet even after they created and pillaged the economy, they lobby congress to keep things as they are while denying help to the same people who gave them this money...

It’s becoming very clear that the rules thet the middleclass have played by working hard are not the same rules Wall Street has. Let’s face it; those American families are not too big to fail. So the hell with them. So even after their coup with no one held accountable they continue to squeeze families and boost revenues on their dime. Credit card minimum payments are being raised, interest rates are going up, small business credit lines reduced and rates rise while the banking industry continues its assault on Americans while at the same time helping to choke off a recovery. First it was black mail and now we’re being held economically hostage.