CW 283: The Financial Health of America's Social Classes with Dr. H. Woody Brock Author of 'American Gridlock'

Between 1980 and 2000, the wealth of our nation grew enormously. Interest rates dropped, dot com businesses grew, and then the housing market was rocketing. We then went into a tricky period where overall net worth grew a bit until the dot com crash; the middle class was sustained to some degree by the housing boom, and then dropped sharply with the housing crash. Dr. H. Woody Brock, President and Founder of Strategic Economic Decisions and author of American Gridlock, joins Jason Hartman for an in-depth explanation of the financial health of our nation across social classes. Dr. Brock discusses the nation overall and then breaks it down into the rich, the middle class, and the poor. The distribution of wealth have left the poor worse off and the rich very well off, as well as shrinking the middle class, but as Dr. Brock explains, looking at the distribution of consumption, the poor and middle classes are in a better position than when looking at the distribution of income. Dr. Brock also expounds on QE3, the Federal Reserve actions, bank reserves, de-leveraging, and more. He wraps up on the subject of his book, American Gridlock: Why the Right and Left are Both Wrong.Founder of Strategic Economic Decisions (SED), Inc., Dr. Horace “Woody” Brock specializes in applications of the modern Economics of Uncertainty (originally developed and championed by Kenneth J. Arrow of Stanford University) to forecasting and risk assessment in the international economy and its asset markets. Holder of five academic degrees, Dr. Brock earned his B.A., M.B.A., and M.S. (mathematics) from Harvard University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University (mathematical economics and political philosophy). He was elected an Andrew Mellon Foundation Bicentennial Fellow of the Aspen Institute in 1976. Dr. Brock studied under Kenneth J. Arrow, Professor of Economics, and John C. Harsanyi, Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, both winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics. Dr. Brock founded SED in 1985, and in doing so was sponsored by Fidelity, GE Capital, IBM Pension Fund, and twenty other institutions looking for a much deeper level of analysis of interest rates and the economy. In its research, SED has focused on apprehending ongoing structural changes in the economy and markets to help clients avoid the pitfalls of illegitimately extrapolating the past into the future. In this regard, Dr. Brock has worked closely with Professor Mordecai Kurz of Stanford University in developing the new theory of Rational Beliefs that is now replacing the classical theory of “Efficient Markets”. This new theory explains for the first time the way in which history rhymes but does not repeat itself.