Median inflation-adjusted household income is down 5.3% in the past 8 years. One America has enjoyed migrating from $54,674 to $51,939.

Emmanuel Saez, of Berkeley, suggests that in four years 2009 to 2012, across 39 states, the “top 1%” captured 95% of Total Income Growth.

“John Kerry and I believe that we shouldn’t have two different economies in America: one for people who are set for life, they know their kids and their grand-kids are going to be just fine; and then one for most Americans, people who live paycheck to paycheck…”

That was of course John Edwards speaking to the Democratic National Convention, July 28, 2004.

Just to get your attention, median inflation-adjusted household income is down 5.3% in the past 8 years. One America has enjoyed migrating from $54,674 to $51,939.

A simple “Two Americas” income analysis is brutal and increasingly brutal: College, $45,400; High School, $25,900.

Emmanuel Saez, of Berkeley, suggests that in four years 2009 to 2012, across 39 states, the “top 1%” captured 95% of Total Income Growth. (Whatever that is. I presume it includes investment capital-gains taken. The “top 1%” never takes a capital-loss.)

This was a great jobs report. Even with that, we received mixed messages including one Bill Gross defending the caution of Christine Lagarde. Part of that deserved caution is about how one America has reached escape velocity and another is stuck on the ground.

Madame Lagarde has asked Chair Yellen to keep the punch bowl filled to the brim. Countless disagree with the IMF when looking at a nice part of the nation. Maybe, Lagarde and Gross are looking at a less nice all-in America, a Union first described by John Edwards.

Sometimes it takes a big disappointment to cause a big change. Brazil has had two in the past year: First came the economic letdown, as the country went from being the darling of investors after the global financial crisis to slipping toward recession. Then came President Dilma Rousseff’s poor showing at the polls, barely eking out a second term as president. In the aftermath, policies are inevitably starting to shift. Brazil’s longstanding “developmentalist” approach to growth is being discarded. But what will replace it?

Starting in the 1950s, much of Brazil’s economic policy hinged on the policy mix known as developmentalism: protectionism, central planning, and the cultivation of the welfare state to encourage the growth of the internal market. In the late 1990s, the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso moved away from this approach by privatizing state industries and beginning to open Brazil’s markets. The subsequent center-left governments of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff maintained his reforms. But until recently, they also fell back on developmentalist rhetoric and a corresponding tendency to assert the state’s control of the economy.

Today, that’s looking like a step backward. Policies based on the belief that the state should boost growth through strong monetary and fiscal expansion combined with price intervention haven’t worked out for Latin America’s biggest economy, which is heading into its deepest recession in 25 years.

As an International Monetary Fund report published in May pointed out, the new economic team Rousseff chose for her second term is faced with the challenge of restoring policy credibility and bolstering confidence in executive decision-making — this in a context of weakening domestic support and a volatile external environment. Economic growth is expected to recover in the medium term, although its potential will depend on the pursuit of much-needed structural reforms, followed by critical fiscal improvements.  Rousseff Veers to Austerity

Jean Pisani Ferry writes:  The topics chosen by the European Central Bank for its annual forum in Sintra, Portugal, at the end of May were not deflation, quantitative easing, or financial stability. They were unemployment, productivity, and pro-growth reforms.  The eurozone lacks both growth momentum and resilience to adverse shocks.

The European Commission now expects growth in the eurozone to reach 1.5% in 2015 and 1.9% in 2016. That certainly looks good in comparison to the near-stagnation of recent years. But, given the combination of massive monetary support, a now-neutral fiscal stance, a steep fall in oil prices, and a depreciated euro, it is the least we could expect, and it will bring per capita GDP back only to its 2008 level. The fact that leaders and pundits are hailing this brighter outlook indicates just how diminished our expectations have become.

Until recently, fiscal austerity and the euro crisis could be blamed for poor economic performance. Not anymore. Although growth may exceed the Commission’s forecast, there are reasons to be concerned about the eurozone’s growth potential.

In order to strengthen that potential, central bankers can only advocate economic reforms; it is governments that are responsible for adopting them. And critics point out that repeated exhortations could prove counterproductive. After all, central banks are quick to rebut monetary-policy suggestions from governments in the name of independence. Why should governments behave differently?  Jobs and Growth in the EU

The British Vancouver Housing Authority has learned from the mistakes of New York.  All new building are mixed income housing. Meanwhile, back in Manhattan, there is no sign that the housing predicatment of people who live and work in the city and contribute to its well-being have had any of their houseing problems solved.

Oshrat Carmiel writes: The newest condominium tower in midtown Manhattan’s billionaires district is ready to open its doors to buyers. It took almost a decade to get there.

The skyscraper at 53 W. 53rd St., designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and rising next to the Museum of Modern Art, will start marketing its 139 apartments next week, with prices starting at $3 million. Planned since 2006, the project endured the real estate bust and a global financial crisis that decimated demand for luxury homes. Now it’s emerging when buyers can’t seem to get enough of them.
Like many of the supertall buildings going up in Midtown, 53W53 commands Central Park views.

“We’re very eager to begin,” said David Penick, the New York-based managing director for developer Hines, which is building the project with Goldman Sachs Group and Singapore-based Pontiac Land Group.

The project’s latest challenge: competing for buyers with about a half-dozen other luxury condo towers that are under construction nearby. The developments—including Vornado Realty Trust’s 220 Central Park South and Aby Rosen’s 100 E. 53rd St.—are transforming Midtown neighborhoods known for hotels and corporate offices into communities of wealthy people from around the world.  They often do not live in their apartments.

The 1,050-foot (320-meter) tower, the size of the Chrysler Building, will rise near the corner of Sixth Avenue between 53rd and 54th streets, on land once owned by the adjacent museum. MoMA will expand its galleries in the bottom three floors of the residential building, whose signature architectural flourish is a web of diagonal concrete beams that gird the structure from the outside before tapering into a pinnacle more than 82 stories into the sky.

“It is the flag—not only of the building—but the flag of the MoMA on the skyline,” says Nouvel, who also designed a Ferrari factory in Italy, an art museum in Abu Dhabi, and a 23-story condo building near Manhattan’s Chelsea waterfront.

“We tried to do a kind of dialogue with the views and with the buildings around,” he says. “You frame it with different shapes in the city and the neighboring buildings.”
53W53 tapers into a pinnacle more than 82 stories into the sky.

Amenities at the tower include a movie theater, a private dining room overlooking Central Park, and temperature-controlled wine vaults. Residents can buy studio apartments on the 14th through 16th floors for their personal service staff.

The project was conceived in 2006, before Houston-based Hines acquired the site from the museum for $126 million. Manhattan’s luxury property market has soared in recent years, with wealthy investors paying ever-higher prices for trophy homes.

“The basic strategy hasn’t really changed,” he says. “It’s a very attractive location adjoining the Museum of Modern Art. We always knew that it would be high end.”

Jeffrey Frankel writes:  Previous trade agreements have  benefited the US (and its partners). The most straightforward argument for TPP is that similar economic benefits are likely to follow.