Here Are The Four Charts That Explain What The Protesters Are Angry About...

Earlier this week, we published a chart-essay that illustrates the extreme inequality that has developed in the US economy over the past 30 years.

The charts explain what the Wall Street protesters are angry about. They also explain why the protesters' message is resonating with the country at large.

Here are the four key points:

1. Unemployment is at the highest level since the Great Depression (with the exception of a brief blip in the early 1980s).

2. At the same time, corporate profits are at an all-time high, both in absolute dollars and as a share of the economy.

3. Wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low. In other words, corporate profits are at an all-time high, in part, because corporations are paying less of their revenue to employees than they ever have. There are lots of reasons for this, many of which are not the fault of the corporations. (It's a global economy now, and 2-3 billion new low-cost employees in China, India, et al, have recently entered the global workforce. This is putting pressure on wages the world over.)

4. Income and wealth inequality in the US economy is near an all-time high: The owners of the country's assets (capital) are winning, everyone else (labor) is losing.

Three charts illustrate this:

The top earners are capturing a higher share of the national income than they have anytime since the 1920s:

CEO pay and corporate profits have skyrocketed in the past 20 years, "production worker" pay has risen 4%.

After adjusting for inflation, average earnings haven't increased in 50 years.

It's worth noting that the US has been in a similar situation before: At the end of the "Roaring '20s," just before the start of the Great Depression. (See some of the charts above).

It took the country 15-20 years to pull out of that slump and fix the imbalances. But by the mid-1950s, employment, corporate profits, wages, and inequality had all returned to more normal levels. And the country enjoyed a couple of decades of relatively well-balanced prosperity. But now, everything's out of whack again.

Importantly, the inequality that has developed in the economy over the past couple of decades is not just a moral issue. It's a practical one. It is, as sociologists might say, "de-stabilizing." It leads directly to the sort of social unrest that we're seeing right now.

SEE ALSO: CHARTS: Here's What The Protesters Are So Angry About...

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3 Crucial Charts From JPMorgan

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JPMorgan just came out with earnings, that were mostly fine. Nothing exciting either way.

However, inside the company's earnings presentation there was some interesting stuff relating to some of the big issues of the day:

How regulations will affect the company.How the bank is exposed to Europe.What's happening with credit trends.Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.
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Two Must-See Charts On Retail Sales

There have been some columns lately attempting to debunk the pro-stimulus, a pro-increasing aggregate demand argument by saying that retail sales are at a record high, and therefor it's ludicrous to say that lack of demand is to blame for the lack of job creation. If it weren't for the fact that the Obama administration was such a confidence-killer, things would be much better.

Unfortunately the demand-is-great story just doesn't hold up.

Doug Short has updated two great charts on retail sales to include today's mediocre data.

The first shows how far we've fallen from the trendline.

This is pretty important if you figure that pre-crash, employers were staffed with the assumption (however mistaken) that demand would continue along some basic historic trend. Thus, even if nominally sales have recovered to old highs, it's obvious to any employer, looking out, that the old growth assumptions weren't useful, and that they were probably overstaffed.

The next is even more damning because it shows how mediocre things are on the sales front once you adjust for things like inflation and population growth.

As you can see, adjusted for population and inflation, retail sales aren't anywhere near their pre-crisis levels.

Now granted, there's more to end demand then retail sales, and stuff like investment is very important to the economy too. But the flipness with which some argue that retail sales are at a record, and so therefore the lack-of-demand explanation for poor hiring doesn't make sense, isn't called for. Demand is still crap, and if demand were stronger, businesses would need to hire more, however much they hate Obama.

And really, all you have to do is ask businesses.

The latest NFIB survey of small business optimism confirms, once again, that lack of sales is the #1 problem they face.

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4 Fascinating Charts On Long-Term Unemployment

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It's hard to imagine a more pressing concern for the economy than long-term unemployment.

The prospect that some people could be permanently cast out of the workforce (due to skill rot) is terrifying. It also raises major social cohesion worries.

In a note on the subject, Wells Fargo's John E. Silvia presents a few long-term unemployment charts that we haven't seen before, but which add some depth to the standard coterie of charts that you see

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