Americans' Net Worth Shrinks $1.33 Trillion In 1Q

[Purveyor]

Source: Associated Press

(06-11) 09:19 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

American households lost $1.33 trillion of their wealth in the first three months of the year as the recession took a bite out of stock portfolios and dragged down home prices.

The Federal Reserve reported Thursday that household net worth fell to $50.38 trillion in the January-March quarter, the lowest level since the third quarter of 2004. The first-quarter figure marked a decline of 2.6 percent, or $1.33 trillion, from the final quarter of 2008.

Net worth represents total assets such as homes and checking accounts, minus liabilities like mortgages and credit card debt.

The damage to wealth in the first quarter came from the sinking stock market. The value of Americans' stock holdings dropped 5.8 percent from the final quarter of last year.

Another hit came from falling house prices. The value of household real-estate holdings fell 2.4 percent. Collectively, homeowners had 41.4 percent equity in their homes in the first quarter. That was down from 42.9 percent in the fourth quarter.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/06/11/national/w090111D87.DTL

[maxsolomon]

1. when you ain't got nothin

you got nothin to lose

[Dappleganger]

2. We are worse off than we were in 2001.

[sakabatou]

5. What do you think happened with Bush?

[onehandle]

3. I bought a Venti Iced Soy Chai yesterday. So make that $1,330,000,000,004.00 nt

[truedelphi]

9. i CAN REST EASY NOW THAT THE NUMBERS ARE DOWN A BIT. SO THANKS. N/T

[DJ13]

4. ..... based on bogus, inflated values that werent real in the first place

[Tab]

6. $600 of that is mine

I'm keepin' my eye on it.

[Iowa]

7. Somebody check my math...

But isn't that a net worth of $166,666 for every man, woman, and child in the nation? 50 trillion divided by 300 million = $166,666.

[nomorenomore08]

10. I guess the billionaires and multi-millionaires probably skew it upward...

:shrug:

[Wednesdays]

8. K&R

:kick: