I remember a while back when congress still openly argued about giving themselves a pay raise. One congressman whined how his family was accustom to a certain life style, and how his kids might not be able to go to the private school he just got them into if the pay raise didnt pass. I dont remember party but it doesnt matter as they are all the same.

Corporate elite and political elite feel they deserve certain things and to accept less is just unconscionable. They will even use Tax Payer money to ensure that the elite dont have to change any of their luxery life styles.
Whereas if bad times fall upon the middle class or lower income, we are told to buckle up, sell our homes, dont need 2 cars, send our kids to public schools and visit food banks.

Of course - wealthy people know how to make money - what's the big surprise that they know how to make more?

Don't believe everything you read in the media. James Cayne of Bear Stearns fame will not be the only wealthy person to have seen a significant drop in his wealth by the time the subprime mess plays itself out. Rich investors who put up billions of dollars to prop up banks and bond insurers in recent months have taken big hits to their net worth. So have owners of mortgage backed bonds and other exotic securities. So have senior executives at financial institutions, from Bank of America to PMI Group. Their stock options are probably worthless. During the Great Depression, the wealth gap between the upper class and the working class actually narrowed, since the rich had much more to lose. The 1929 drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average continued into the 1930's. A new high was not reached until 1954.

I agree with kellygrrrl, $1 million in financial assets hardly makes you wealthy and is certainly not enough to retire on unless you also have a fabulous pension coming to you. Many millions of Americans are in for a financial shock in the coming years.

The ongoing war in Iraq will continue to bleed the US economy and rich and poor alike will suffer.

No surprise here. This is why everybody else is doing so bad.

The gist of Western Civilization is all about redistribution of wealth.

Both Parties are responsible for this - ALTHOUGH, I give the REPIGS a slight edge.

As both parites morph increasingly towards enacting laws/relaxing regulations to benefit their very GENEROUS DONORS, we, the American people have to start looking beyond these 2 CORPORATE ENTITIES.

It is time for a THIRD PARTY - one who represents the PEOPLE's Interests.

Just waiting for one of our resident libertarians to show up and accuse us all of class warfare.

A toast: To good times.

Why is anyone surprised by this?

Here's how it goes - markets get driven up to a peak by paid marketers (like the financial services industry) who soak the ignorant, middle-class investors, and when the markets crash, the super-rich buy up all these assets for bottom dollar. The super-rich now own and control a larger portion of the world's assets. Then eventually the middle-class saves enough money to invest again, a new boom drives up the market, wrings the investing capital from the middle-class, and crashes. The super-rich then buy up more assets at cut-throat prices.

This is why markets are engineered for cycles by the Fed and big business. It's all a process of slowly wringing capital from the middle-class until there's only the super-rich who use their wealth to avoid doing any labor whatsoever, and the poor indebted servitude wage-slaves who do all the work.

And yet no one seems to grasp this obvious truth.

One of the purposes of the elite controlled media - division. Here is a classical example of trying to piss us off. Letting all the middle class folks know just how much they have been screwed. It's right up there with dividing us along party lines. Hooray for us however, as more and more middle class folks are starting to see through the charade. We see that politicians are all the same at the top. The Dems aren't comming to our rescue, they just get to be the rhetorical mouthpeices as another year goes by of decimating America. When we are finally able to break free of the control over every aspect of our lives, it will be because we transcended the artificial divisions and grouped together as human beings to fight the evil bastards who run our world. And it's coming!

If we had a real educational system in this country then kids would learn early on how during the last Great Depression, and every recession since, that the super wealthy Always come out better off than they went in. Always. The question should be, how is that possible? The answer is that it has nothing to do with wise investing or business acumen that rewards a job well done. It has only to do with the fact that the entire game is rigged worse than Vegas or a Carnival gambling tent, and when you run the game, you always win.

Trickle up economics are voodoo economics. Couldn't have been accomplished without the evangelicals being used to gain a majority for the greedy old psychopaths. That's why Karl Marx called religion the opiate of the masses. "Masses" - a good pun for Marx, probably not intended.

Rich getting richer? Wealthy getting wealthier? Well, duh.

Wasn't that the purpose of the Bush tax cuts? Remember "Some people call you the elite, I call you my base, the haves and the have mores", George W. Bush. Republicans wine "class warfare" likes the children they are, the reality is tax policies can create or deny wealth in targeted sectors of economy. The trick is the right balance in both taxes and spending. In the case of George Bush's misguided let them eat cake tax policy, the big middle or silent majority is getting progressively poorer, the silent majority drives the economy, as well as elections in this country, regardless of what people might believe.

The Bush tax cuts were never permanent, due to sunset in 2011, and all the candidates are aware of this reality. McCain is a liar, when he declares if elected, he will make them permanent, because tax and trade policies need to fluid reflecting the economic reality. Iraq is expensive, as well as the huge growth of an ineffective government bureaucracy under Bush. Reality is a bitch.

Easy to grow your wealth by 50% when you've been converting dollars to Euros all along.

And this comes as a surprise to who?