Did you know given inflation there is approx 5 times more wealth in this country alone than was during the lumber/oil/shipping baron days? Did you know if investments stayed FLAT for the next 25 years close to 3.5 TRILLION dollars will be passed as inherantance to the next generation?...and thats NEW money. There are credible estimates this figure tops $40 TRILLION!I dont think people understand at all the wealth in this country. Things gotta get a whole lot worse before it really starts hurting. This country is lazy and fat.
Not to mention that the population is proportionately larger than 5X... And if a huge % of that wealth is in the hands of .01% of the population, what good is it to the rest of us? Mexico and Nigeria are pretty wealthy, too, but you'd never know it by the way much of the population lives...
In case you haven't figured it out, let me clue you in- Bernanke's job is to sugar-coat it, make it seem better than it is while maintaining some shred of credibility... If he says it's bad, it is, and probably a lot worse than he's letting on...