UPDATED: Wealth skew is here: rich getting richer, poor getting poorer

Update at bottom.

As Russia re-awakens her old glory, America's old glory is fading. Many people ask if America is in the bible concerning the last days. I do not think she will be. We are certainly on the decline. Here is one devastating headline:

Iran Press: Americans lost 1.5 trillion in household wealth this quarter...
American households have lost 2.3 percent or $1.5 trillion of their net worth from April to June last quarter, according to the Federal Reserve. (!!!)

Another devastating headline:

Yahoo News/Census: 1 in 7 Americans live in poverty
The ranks of the working-age poor climbed to the highest level since the 1960s as the recession threw millions of people out of work last year, leaving one in seven Americans in poverty

CNBC/Cramer: Two US Banks fail, total for year now 127
State regulators closed two banks Friday, bringing the total number of U.S. bank failures for 2010 to 127.State regulators shuttered Haven Trust Bank of Florida ... State regulators closed North County Bank of Arlington, Wash.

Last week we read that "Federal regulators have seized six banks in the Southeast, Midwest and Northeast, bringing the number of failed U.S. banks this year to 125, officials said. Three of the seizures were in Georgia, which has had 45 bank failures since 2007, the most of any state since the recession began in December 2007, The Wall Street Journal reported. Fourteen Georgia banks have failed so far this year.  The failed Georgia banks are the Bank of Ellijay, First Commerce Community Bank, and Peoples Bank. Community & Southern Bank of Carrollton, Ga., assumed deposits at the three failed banks."

The US economy is failing, and Western nations in Europe are failing, but not everybody is failing. Many nations are experiencing growth.

India Business Standard: 'We have covered significant ground'
The Indian economy itself has been undergoing a remarkable transformation since the reforms of 1991, which deregulated the economy, internally, while liberalising trade and investment policies. Over the past decade, India has been one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world and, in recent years, has reached a growth trajectory of 8-9 per cent a year.

China Daily: Robust Chinese Economy Seen Chugging Forward
The economy will be on a good footing if it achieves a growth rate of 10 percent this year and the inflation rate is around 3 percent, the nation's top statistician said on Wednesday.

Bloomberg News: Brazil is fastest growing South American economy
Brazil’s economy added a record number of government-registered jobs in the first eight months of the year on a surge in investment, signaling Latin America’s biggest economy is growing rapidly. Yields jumped.

Wall Street Journal: Sweden's Reinfelt boosted by economy as vote approaches
Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfelt heads into Sunday's general election on the crest of the sharpest economic recovery among Europe's major countries.

Poverty will exist in the Tribulation, but most things will be more or less the same as they are now, except more extreme. Jesus said in Luke 17:27 that "Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all." There's money if people are marrying and living and building and eating and drinking.

The notion that everyone will be poor is a misnomer. I wrote more about it here:  "A Great Gulf Fixed: Goodbye Middle Class! Instead, what will happen is that there will be great wealth skew, the very rich and the very poor will exist side by side. The poor will cry, the rich will buy. It is a picture painted by the following verses:

Rev 6:6, the poor cannot afford bread but the rich still buy luxuries- "And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, "A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine."

James 5:1-5, the poor cry for their pay that the rich withheld at their expense: "Behold, the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields, and which has been withheld by you, cries out against you; and the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.  You have lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter."

Revelation 18:11-13 depicts merchants mourning the loss of Babylon, the rich had bought her luxuries in a still-robust trade even at the end of the Tribulation:

"...cargoes of gold and silver and precious stones and pearls and fine linen and purple and silk and scarlet, and every kind of citron wood and every article of ivory and every article made from very costly wood and bronze and iron and marble, and cinnamon and spice and incense and perfume and frankincense and wine and olive oil and fine flour and wheat and cattle and sheep, and cargoes of horses and chariots and slaves and human lives." And we can imagine the extreme poverty of the slaves and human lives who existed at the whim and pleasure of the very rich.

The difference is that people will not care that the poor are hungry and starving outside their doors. The rich simply whoop it up.

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these." (2 Timothy 3:1-5)

So the widening disparity of of certain nations' economies should not surprise us, it will be so in the Tribulation, more correctly named, The Time of Jacob's Trouble.

This article from California shocked and saddened me. The town in which the leaders raked in the money is one of the poorest in LA County.

Small town officials arrested over fraud in California
Eight officials from an impoverished Californian town were arrested Tuesday on charges of paying themselves vast salaries at the expense of local taxpayers, prosecutors said.  The eight, including former municipal manager of the town of Bell just south of Los Angeles, stand accused of using roughly 5.5 million dollars of public money to benefit themselves, through illicit loans.  "This was calculated greed and theft accomplished by greed and secrecy," said District Attorney Steve Cooley, after the officials were arrested mostly without incident. But while local people went hungry, town manager Robert Rizzo paid himself 787,000 dollars last year -- nearly twice as much as US President Barack Obama -- even though his town only has 38,000 residents, prosecutors allege.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has become inordinately richer while in her position this year, more than any other Congressman. She is 8 million dollars richer...

Rich Dems getting richer
According to The Hill’s analysis of financial disclosure forms filed last summer, the Speaker’s net worth rose more in 2009 than any other lawmaker’s, from $13.7 million in 2008 to $21.7 million in 2009.

Child Hunger, as seen at Wal-Mart
Bill Simon, the head of Wal-Mart's U.S. operations: "And you need not go further than one of our stores on midnight at the end of the month. And it's real interesting to watch, about 11 p.m., customers start to come in and shop, fill their grocery basket with basic items, baby formula, milk, bread, eggs, and continue to shop and mill about the store until midnight, when ... government electronic benefits cards get activated and then the checkout starts and occurs. And our sales for those first few hours on the first of the month are substantially and significantly higher. And if you really think about it, the only reason somebody gets out in the middle of the night and buys baby formula is that they need it, and they've been waiting for it. Otherwise, we are open 24 hours — come at 5 a.m., come at 7 a.m., come at 10 a.m. But if you are there at midnight, you are there for a reason".

"What Wal-Mart calls the "paycheck cycle" has recently been "extreme," Simon said, with lots of shoppers at the beginning of the month and fewer at the end. Wal-Mart is also seeing an "ever-increasing amount of transactions being paid for with government assistance," he said..."

Children are going hungry, desperate parents roam Wal-Mart aisles at midnight, waiting for checks to clear so they can buy baby formula, and Nancy Pelosi somehow earned 8 million MORE this year than last. Earning money is not a problem. And even Jesus said the poor will always be with us. (Mt 26:11). It is the attitude about getting money and what you do with it that is the end time characteristic. The officials in Bell, CA stole from the public. The government in DC today is stealing from the public, at the very least by printing money with nothing to back it up, while spending more and more wantonly - causing a massive debt load on every person.

These economic times are not simply tough times that will turn around. It will not get better. It will only get worse...unless you are saved by grace of Jesus and will disappear in the blink of an eye, in the rapture! If you want to know more, or how to have a relationship with Jesus, please click here

------------------------
UPDATE

I found this news article this morning:

Census finds record gap between rich and poor:
The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its widest amount on record as young adults and children in particular struggled to stay afloat in the recession.  The top-earning 20 percent of Americans — those making more than $100,000 each year — received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent earned by those below the poverty line, according to newly released census figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.