Economic recovery only for those in the top 5 percent

For those in the top 5 percent, the recovery has been pretty good. As for the other 95 percent, well … maybe not so much. Post-financial crisis wealth disparity has been well-chronicled.

Federal Reserve Gov. Sarah B. Raskin drew widespread attention with this speech in April that showed how poorly the lower income levels have fared during the recovery, particularly because those demographics have their wealth concentrated in housing and are hit far more severely by falling prices.

The unemployed in lower-income groups also take a hit because they have a more difficult time finding jobs that pay at a rate commensurate with the positions they lost.

Finally, history has shown that highly accommodative monetary policy widens income disparity by awarding speculators and penalizing savers. While the S&P 500 is up nearly 150 percent since the March 2009 lows, that’s most helped those heavily invested in stocks.

The University of California, Berkeley has produced some seminal research on this topic. But this series of charts, put together by Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com, helps put the sharply skewed recovery into perspective. Read more >>

NPR: Gulf oil spill more than 10X greater than thought

Image by IBRRC via Flickr

desdemonadespair.net

By Frank James and Allison Richards
May 13, 2010, 7:02 pm

NPR has learned that much more oil, 70,000 barrels a day or more than ten times the official estimate, is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon pipe, based on scientific analysis of the video released Wednesday.

That's the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez tanker full every four days.

The U.S. Coast Guard has estimated that oil was gushing into the ocean at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day. But, again, NPR has been told that estimate is very low.

By Richard Harris
May 13, 2010

The volume of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig may be at least 10 times higher than previously estimated, NPR has learned.

The U.S. Coast Guard has estimated that oil was gushing from a broken pipe on the Gulf floor at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day.

But sophisticated scientific analysis of sea floor video made available Wednesday by the oil company BP shows that the true figure is closer to 70,000 barrels a day, NPR's Richard Harris reports.

That means the oil spilling into the Gulf has already far exceeded the equivalent of the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker accident in Alaska, which spilled at least 250,000 barrels of oil.

The analysis was conducted by Steve Werely, an associate professor at Purdue University, using a technique called particle image velocimetry. Harris tells Michele Norris that the method is accurate to about 20 percent. That means the flow could range between 56,000 barrels a day and 84,000 barrels a day.

Another analysis by Eugene Chiang, a professor of astrophysics at the University of California Berkeley, calculated the rate of flow to be between 20,000 barrels a day and 100,000 barrels a day — both higher than the Coast Guard's estimate.

But the pipe is spewing both oil and gas and the BP does not make it clear how much is oil and how much gas.

"BP has always said there is no way to measure the amount spilling from the pipe," Harris said.

But, he said, the uncertainty could be reduced if BP would share more information with the scientists.