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https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/americas-stagnant-economy-since-1989-a3f

https://theduran.com/americas-stagnant-economy-since-1989/

America’s Stagnant Economy Since 1989

24 February 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

You can see the graph of the “Real Median Household Income in the United States” from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (“FRED”), and it shows that in 1989 the median was $66,290, and 35 years later in 2024 it was $83,730. This is an annual growth-rate of less than 1%; it is 0.662%. America has had a stagnant economy for at least 35 years, notwithstanding the constant lies from ‘journalists’, politicians, ‘historians’, and other propagandists for the American empire, which has been dissipating Americans’ taxes by sanctioning, couping, and invading, what this dictatorship-by-its-super-rich label as being “autocracies’ in order to ‘justify’ their scam against the American people so they’ll be deceived to think this political show pitting two actually fascist political Parties against each other constitutes some sort of democracy. It’s no democracy at all. It’s a lie by all of them.

During that same time-period, the real (inflation-adjusted) annualized rate of return on the U.S. Stock market via the S&P was far more than 1%, it was 8.8%. The same calculation for the Wilshire stock index of all U.S. stocks is 7.4%. (Stock-marketers, brokerage firms, generally ignore the Wilshire, because it is lower.)

The poor half of the U.S. population own around 1% of U.S. stocks and mutual fund shares; the richest 1% own around 50%, and America’s billionaires own around 5% to 15% of U.S. stocks and mutual fund shares, so, they own approximately 10%. There are fewer than 1,000 U.S. billionaires; so, the average one owns a bit more than one-thousandth of 10%, or one-hundredth of 1%, or 0.0001, of the U.S. stock market. However, each one of them concentrates his/her holdings in just a few companies, which are the firms that the billionaire controls or else shares with a few other billionaires in controlling. That would be a network of controlling holders even if amongst themselves they would own less than 50% of the company’s stock, because no other group would own nearly as much of the firm. However, most S&P-listed firms are instead effectively controlled by their top ten identified owners, which usually are institutions, various “funds,” the biggest three being BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, and both of the first two of those are closed to individual investors except through brokers — thus are themselves institutions whose investors are only other “funds.” This anonymizes and institutionalizes “The Blob” that constitutes America’s Deep State. And, in fact:

Approximately 88 % of S&P 500 companies have BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street combined as the largest shareholders (i.e., collectively among the top holders) — based on research that examines their common ownership in S&P 500 firms.

In other words, about 440 out of 500 S&P 500 companies have these three institutions as the largest group of holders.

For example, although many people have alleged that Coca Cola Company is controlled by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire-Hathaway conglomerate, Berkshire-Hathaway is only the top stockholder in it, but all of the next three holders are Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street, which collectively owns 20% of its shares, while Berkshire-Hathaway owns only 9.3%. So, Coca Cola is actually institutionally controlled, not controlled by the billionaire Buffett. In fact, numbers 4 through 10 on its top-stockholders list are, in order: Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Geode Capital, Charles Schwab Inc., JPMorgan Chase, and Norges Bank; and all of the top 10 together constitute 32%; and they would be far more than enough to control the corporation. But, really, just BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, together, could do it if they all agree on a particular matter. So, even Coca Cola is a collectively controlled firm — not controlled by only a single billionaire. This is typical. America’s billionaires lead the investor class, but do it collectively with other stockholders (especially with other billionaires), and the poor half of the U.S. population own 1% of the U.S. stock market (not counting mutual fund shares, but only directly own).

BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, are all among the top 4 stockholders in Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Chevron, Costco, Lockheed Martin, Tesla, and Coca Cola. However, Elon Musk owns from 12% to 25% of Tesla, and the big three institutions together own probably slightly less than he does; so, it might be an individually controlled corporation. Anyway, most of the mega-corporations are controlled by institutional investors, which represent ONLY the super-rich. 

The richest 1% own 40-45% (not including indirectly owned, such as via mutual fund shares).

The richest 5% own 60-65%

The richest 10% own 88%.

In America’s embodiment of what Mussolini had called alternatively a “fascist” and also a “corporationist” nation, the bottom half have no representation, either in the mega-corporations, or in their Government. They are political nullities who are surrounded and shaped by the institutions (financial and otherwise) that together control their culture and their society. How can a revolution develop against it? Who would control it? How?

Consequently, during 1989-2024, while the median annual income rose in total, in real terms, 0.662%, and the S&P annually rose in real terms 8.8%, the bottom 50% of Americans got virtually none of that 8.8% They aren’t represented at all in American boardrooms, and they also aren’t represented at all, in the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government represents only the political megadonors, virtually all of whom are billionaires. It’s the power of concentrated wealth. It is the power of extreme economic inequality. The more unequal the wealth-distribution is, the higher the likelihood that a country will be a dictatorship by its super-rich, no democracy at all; and the reason for this is that in any country with such extreme concentration of wealth, the super-rich will spend whatever they must in order to fool the public to elect politicians who are predominantly funded by one or more of them. Their fortune can be retained only by retaining their regime.

This extreme inequality-of-wealth is exhibited also in many other of the countries within the U.S.-Israel empire. Gini coefficients (the standard measure of economic inequality) of all countries within the U.S. empire, show that the imperial country, America, has significantly higher economic inequality than does any of its colonies (‘allies’), such as:

Selected U.S.-Aligned Countries — Gini Coefficients (Disposable Income)

Country

Gini (≈ latest OECD/World Bank)

United States

0.41–0.42

United Kingdom

0.35–0.36

Canada

0.31–0.32

Germany

0.29–0.30

France

0.29–0.30

Italy

0.33–0.35

Spain

0.33–0.34

Netherlands

0.28–0.29

Japan

0.32–0.33

South Korea

0.33–0.34

Australia

0.32–0.33

Poland

0.28–0.30

As even Google’s AI says (on 23 February 2026):

The United States, often analyzed as the core of a modern economic empire, has a high income Gini coefficient of approximately 0.46–0.47, indicating significant inequality compared to other developed nations. While not formally an empire, U.S. economic influence is associated with high domestic inequality, with wealth concentration reaching a 0.85 Gini coefficient.

United States: The U.S. has a high [income] Gini coefficient (around 0.466), reflecting major disparities, driven by factors like lack of health care access, low minimum wages, and high wealth concentration.

However: The U.S.-Israel colonies (‘allies’) are also dictatorships, because NO colony can be anything but a dictatorship, due to its being dependent (especially in its foreign policies — which constitute the predominant portion of a nation’s sovereignty and independence) upon the imperial country (U.S.). This is the reason why the leaders of America’s colonies (stooges) tend to have extremely low net approval-ratings from their populations, such as these from Morning Consult’s poll on February 8th:

[The leaders of South Korea, Japan, and Canada are omitted from this list because they have been too short a time in office, and almost all leaders who were recently elected have positive net-approval ratings, which those do.]

Giorgia Meloni (Italy): 41%-52% = net -11%

Donald Trump (United States): 40%-54% = net -14%

Donald Tusk (Poland): 39%-51% = net -12%

Ulf Kristersson (Sweden): 39%-53% = net -14%

Anthony Albanese (Australia): 38%-51% = net -13%

Bart de Wever (Belgium): 36%-51% = net -15%

Jonas Gahr Støre (Norway): 35%-58% = net -23%

Pedro Sánchez (Spain): 33%-63% = net -30%

Christian Stocker (Austria): 32%-55% = net -23% [Though in power less than a year, he’s already despised.] 

Dick Schoof (Netherlands): 31%-52% = net -21%

Keir Starmer (United Kingdom):

Friedrich Merz (Germany): 21%-74% =  net -53%

Emmanuel Macron (France): 16%-78% = net -62%

European Constitutions are far less democratic than is America’s (Israel’s is — though undeclared — the Torah, and is therefore essentially theocratic); so, anyone calling the U.S. and its colonies  (or its master-nation) “democratic” is either lying or else deceived.

Consequently, America’s economy since at least 1989 has been stagnant, but very profitable for its billionaires; and, though America’s economy has had a lower growth-rate than the rest of the world has had, its growth-rate has been higher than that of any of is colonies except for South Korea, which has been near the global average.

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The Conference Board is the leading tabulator of the economic performance of the U.S.-and-allied economies, and hides whom its funders and biggest funders are, but its 2012 Annual Report disclosed in its pages 26-32 that its leaders represent prominent U.S.-and-allied mega-corporations. So, it represents the empire. It published on 11 February 2026, at  https://www.conference-board.org/topics/global-economic-outlook:

 

and it confirms that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and America’s sanctions and secondary sanction against Russia and against countries that would not comply with those U.S.-imposed primary sanctions against purchasers of Russian oil and gas (which energy was less than half as costly in the EU as others countries’ oil and gas were), there was a prompt and long-lasting halving of the 3.1% annual GDP growth-rate of “All Mature Economies” (i.e., the U.S. empire) down to 1.6%, and it is predicted there by the Conference Board that the rate will remain at around this percentage until at least 2037. So, the U.S. Government’s anti-Russian sanctions forced a halving of the economic growth-rates in its colonies. Furthermore, the least-harmed was the U.S. — the imperial country — itself, which grew at 2.5% in 2022, sank only to 2.2% in 2025, and is expected to be around 1.7% by 2037. This is because America is far more self-sufficient in energy than Europe is. Though America’s sanctions didn’t harm U.S., nor even significantly harm Russia, they harmed the EU countries, which had especially depended upon Russia’s oil and especially gas, in order to keep the EU’s factories competitive and consumers comfortable. On 24 June 2023, I headlined “Now the Pay-off Comes from Blowing Up the Nord Stream Pipeline” and documented that U.S. billionaires were profiting from these takings from the EU that had been authorized by EU leaders. EU publics are not being informed about this fact, and believe that instead Russia is to blame for their distress.

Furthermore, the Conference Board also was indicating that whereas “All Developing Economies” were growing at 4.2% in 2022, this remained at 4.5% in 2025, and is predicted to decline to 3.1% in 2037; but in 2025, China’s grew at 5.0%, India’s at 7.5%, and Russia’s at 0.5%; and the percentages in 2037 are expected to be respectively 3.8%, 4.4%, and 2.6%. Meanwhile, the “Euro area” was at 1.1% in 2025 and is expected to be at 0.9% in 2037. According to the Conference Board’s report, then, the “Euro area” is being hit much harder by the U.S.-imposed sanctions against Russia than is Russia itself.  The Conference Board says nothing about this; it explains nothing. However, EU-based experts blame it not on America but on Russia. For example:

A year ago, on 7 February 2025, Paolo Gentiloni, who served as prime minister of Italy from December 2016-June 2018 and European Commissioner for Economy from 2019-2024, headlined at America’s Brookings Institution, “Europe’s economy is at a crossroads. Will it take the right path?”, and he wrote that “the European economy was struck by a second black swan, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While this event reshaped geopolitics globally, its economic impact was especially severe in Europe due to soaring energy prices and the end of the illusion of cheap Russian gas.” He lied to call it an “illusion”; it was the stark reality. 

And on 7 May 2022, Al Jazeera, of Qatar — one of the U.S.’s colonies — headlined “Europe scrambles for long-term fix after Putin cuts off gas” and reported that “‘Putin’s got this weapon and he’s using it,’ Natasha Lindstaedt, a professor of government at the University of Essex and the author of Democratic Decay and Authoritarian Resurgence, told Al Jazeera.” In other word: the solution isn’t regime-change in America, but instead (what the entire empire — its billionaires — seek) regime-change in Russia.

PUBLIC DISCLOSURE:

I am not and never have been rewarded by, hired by, or otherwise a representative of, or in any other way dependent upon or influenced by, any billionaire or institution, except to the extent that every U.S. citizen is legally required to be. My views result instead 100% from my own investigations, and my sources are always linked-to, which is the reason why I produce only online text-based — no video — commentaries, which directly link to their sources. I therefore shun footnotes and endnotes as references (such as are, still, unfortunately, required by academic media) because I have found that around 20% of those in legacy pre-Digital-Age printed media do not actually show what the author in the text alleges that they show. Academic media, like other media, should not be trusted on their face, but must instead be investigated on one’s own. I therefore want all of my sources to be only a click away from the reader — so that the reader can always easily access my source to verify that my linked-to source does, indeed, document what my text has alleged.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.