September 16, 2010 07:30 PM UTC

Census Bureau: Poverty up 10%

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• by: CoalCreekWildfire

The Census Bureau release its 2009 numbers and they are not pretty:

• Poverty is up

• Health insurance coverage is down

• Median household income fell

Almost four million Americans became poor in 2009, up almost 10% from 39.8M in 2008 to 43.6M in 2009.

Over four million Americans lost their Health Insurance in 2009, up 9% from 46.3M in 2008 to 50.7M in 2009.

The median household income fell from $49,777 in 2009 from $50,303 in 2008, a decline of 1%.

Mike Derby, writing in the Walls Street Journal quotes Alan Greenspan:

[Alan Greenspan] said fiscal stimulus efforts have fallen far short of expectations, and the government now needs to get out of the way and allow businesses and markets to power the recovery.

Derby goes on to note:

To many, the financial crisis was largely born of that ideology, and to some degree, Greenspan has himself said he overestimated the market’s willingness to understand and price for risk. Greenspan has also been widely accused of running an overly easy monetary policy during the early years of the last decade, in turn providing the fuel that powered the housing bubble, the rupturing of which drove the worst recession in generations.

All true but irrelevant and now distant history. The fact is that the stimulus, the numerous bailouts, and new consumer protections are not working and nobody believes the economy will get better soon. The problem is uncertainty and it is only getting worse with every new Congressionally mandated “fix.”

Michael S. Derby, Greenspan: Fiscal Stimulus Worked Far Less Than Expected, WSJ.com Real Time Economics, 9/15/2010 12:41 PM ET

DAVID LEONHARDT, Previewing the Income Report, NYTimes.com Economix, 9/15/2010 8:45 AM ET, http://economix.blogs.nytimes….

U.S. Poverty Rate Rises to 14.3%, WSJ.com U.S. NEWS, 9/16/2010 10:51 AM ET, http://on.wsj.com/bL8GLU