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RUSH: You know, there's unemployment news today. And I want to it read this to you. This is from the Zero Hedge website, which we quote frequently on this program. The headline: "Initial Jobless Claims Plunge to 42-Year Lows, Despite Surging Job Cuts." Now, that doesn't make any sense. The number of people filing unemployment claims is at a 42-year low? Sorry. No, there has to be something else to make that true. That just can't be. Then the second part of headline: "despite surging job cuts," meaning layoffs are happening all over this country. People are losing their jobs...

Forbes put together the definitive wealth list of the candidates, compiling the net worth estimates of the top 20 Republican and Democratic contenders. Forbes used a variety of documents, including financial disclosures with the Federal Election Commission, property records, mortgage papers and tax records. Obviously, billionaire Donald Trump took first place. But how did the others stack up? Check out Forbes' full rankings below: 1. Donald Trump $4.5 bil Richest candidate by a long shot is the GOP front-runner. 2. Carly Fiorina $58 mil Former HP CEO has over 1,000 investments. 3. Hillary Clinton $45 mil Half of power couple;...

Real-estate magnate Donald Trump frequently touts his wealth on the presidential campaign trail. But a new report essentially accuses the GOP candidate of overstating his net worth by billions of dollars.Bloomberg reporters Caleb Melby and Richard Rubin, citing an analysis by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, reported Thursday that Trump was actually worth about $2.9 billion.That's more than $7 billion less than Trump has said.In a statement earlier this month, Trump's campaign wrote that the real-estate developer and television personality has seen his net worth rocket upward even in just the past year."Real-estate values in New York City, San Francisco, Miami,...

The world learned much about real-estate mogul Donald Trump's wealth this week, as the Federal Election Commission released a 92-page personal-financial-disclosure report filed by the Republican presidential candidate as part of his nascent campaign. Trump's campaign released a statement on July 15, when he filed disclosure with the FEC, saying it would reveal a "massive" net worth "in excess of TEN BILLION DOLLARS." The report still does not completely detail Trump's fortune, as it deals mostly with ranges. "For instance, they have boxes once a certain number is reached that simply state $50 million or more. Many of these boxes...

The net worth of U.S. households rose in the first quarter due to the rising value of homes and investments, a positive sign for the outlook for consumer spending. The increase added $1.6 trillion to the total wealth of American families, putting it at a new record high of $84.9 trillion, a report by the Federal Reserve showed on Thursday. While the economy and consumer spending was sluggish in much of the first quarter, the data suggests U.S. households are on a better financial footing and consumers may open their wallets more. Many economists believe that consumers spend a few...

          Average U.S.      Household Wealth             Real Estate $186,702     Durables $44,374     Deposits $81,497     Stocks/Business $422,126     Bonds $27,139     Misc. $7,598       ____________     Total Assets $769,435             Debts -$113,397       _____________     Net Worth $656,039           Something that snuck by me (and most people) last month was the Fed's quarterly Flow of Funds Report --their bigass number-dump that says where all America's money has...

Since leaving the White House, the Clintons have earned at least 100 million dollars and currently have a net worth of up to 50 million dollars. So why in the world do the taxpayers need to give Bill Clinton $944,000 to fund his extravagant lifestyle in 2014? If ordinary Americans truly understood how much money many former politicians are being handed every year they would go bananas. According to a Congressional Research Service report that was published earlier this year, the federal government has given a total of nearly 16 million dollars to Bill Clinton since 2001. Each one of...

Household net worth rose to $74.8 trillion in the second quarter, helped by the stock market, housing market and government accounting. Household wealth in the U.S. increased from April through June, supported by gains in the stock and housing markets that are improving Americans’ finances. Net worth for households and non-profit groups climbed by $1.34 trillion in the second quarter, or 1.8 percent from the previous three months, to $74.8 trillion, the Federal Reserve said today from Washington in its financial accounts report, previously known as the flow of funds survey. Here is a chart of household net worth since...

October 12 marks the 12th anniversary of the bombing of the USS Cole. The grim milestone comes as President Obama faces mounting questions about his administration's dereliction of duty during the murderous attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya. And it comes just a day after resurgent al-Qaida thugs pulled off the drive-by assassination of a top Yemeni security official who worked at the U.S. embassy in Sanaa. These are not "bumps in the road." These are gravesites on the blood-spattered path to surrender. Seventeen U.S. sailors died in the brutal suicide attack on the guided Navy missile destroyer as...

The median net worth of American households has dropped to a 43-year low as the lower and middle classes appear poorer and less stable than they have been since 1969. According to a recent study by New York University economics professor Edward N. Wolff, median net worth is at the decades-low figure of $57,000 (in 2010 dollars). And as the numbers in his study reflect, the situation only appears worse when all the statistics are taken as a whole. According to Wolff, between 1983 and 2010, the percentage of households with less than $10,000 in assets (using constant 1995 dollars)...

Wealth implosion: It's not just housing By Tami Luhby @CNNMoney June 19, 2012: 2:32 PM ET NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Americans' net worth collapsed in recent years, but don't blame the housing market for it all. A CNNMoney analysis of new Census Bureau data shows that if you strip out the effects of the housing collapse, median household net worth still fell by 25% between 2005 and 2010. The decline was driven largely by the plummeting stock market, which devastated Americans' portfolios and retirement accounts. Overall, median household net worth declined 35% to $66,740 in 2010. The median worth of...

WASHINGTON — The recent financial crisis left the median American family in 2010 with no more wealth than they had in the early 1990s, erasing almost two decades of accumulated prosperity, the Federal Reserve said Monday. The median family, richer than half of the nation’s families and poorer than the other half, had a net worth of $77,300 in 2010, down from $126,400 in 2007, the Fed said. The crash of housing prices explained three-quarters of the loss. This vast loss of wealth was compounded by a loss of income, as the earnings of the median family fell by 7.7...

<p>NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The average American family’s net worth dropped almost 40% between 2007 and 2010, according to a triennial study released Monday by the Federal Reserve.</p>

In an interview im Miami with the Hispanic journalist, Jorge Ramos of Univision, who asked him what he was worth, Mitt Romney claimed he is worth between $150 million to 200 million dollars. http://www.boston.com/Boston/politicalintelligence/2012/01/mitt-romney-says-net-worth-about-million/QYUE2XtKi7rrMubEGYrnwL/index.html Romney is the founding CEO of Bain Capital, one of the largest private equity firms in the world. In a documentary that Newt Gingrich's PAC ran in South Carolina, the value of Bain was put at $65 billion dollars. Founding CEOs usually retain ownership of a large number of shares in the firms that they founded. For example, Microsoft is worth $219 billion, and Bill Gates...

(This post originally ran in May 2010. We've updated it to include the net worth of the leading Republican presidential candidates). 24/7 Wall St. has examined the finances of all forty-three presidents. This article provides net worth figures for each in 2010 dollars. Because a number of presidents, particularly in the early 19th Century, made and lost huge fortunes in a matter of a few years, the number for each man is based on his net worth at its peak. In the case of each president we have taken into account hard assets like land, estimated lifetime savings based on...

Americans' wealth last summer suffered its biggest quarterly loss in more than two years as stocks, pension funds and home values lost value. At the same time, corporations increased their cash stockpiles to record levels. Household net worth fell 4 percent to $57.4 trillion in the July-September quarter, according to a Federal Reserve report released Thursday. It was the sharpest drop since the October-December quarter of 2008 and was the second straight quarterly decline. Household wealth, or net worth, is the value of assets like homes, bank accounts and stocks, minus debts like mortgages and credit cards. The value of...

(Washington, DC) -- The Republican Presidential hopeful known for his "Nine-Nine-Nine" tax reform plan earned 900-thousand-dollars last year. Cain's personal financial information was released today. It shows he was paid 359-thousand-dollars by the Whirlpool Corporation. Cain also pocketed about 165-thousand bucks from his Atlanta-based radio show. He earned 120-thousand-dollars from Hallmark Cards and about 200-grand from farm equipment company Agco Corporation. Herman Cain also reports having assets valued at over three-million-dollars. Cain's tax plan would create nine-percent personal and corporate tax rates.

I grew up in the deep South and once, when I was going to high school, I went to a friend's party. A couple dozen of us were hanging around downstairs, enjoying ourselves, when we found out that the father of the girl who was throwing the party wouldn't let a kid into his house because he was black. You may be wondering if there was any other motive. Maybe the kid mouthed off, he was dressed like a thug, the two of the them had some kind of run-in before...none of that was true. The father was just a...

Income does Not equal Wealth. Net Worth equals Wealth. Income equals Net Work!

The news is good at “what.” It isn’t very good at “why.” Like this story yesterday, about the growing disparity in net worth between whites and non-whites in America. Specifically, while the average white person in America has a net worth of about $113,000, the average black person has a net worth of about $5,000 and the average Latino person comes in at around $6,000. That was the news. Whites are financially worth more than blacks, and that gap is growing significantly, to its greatest point in 25 years, in fact. That was all that was said. That was the...