According to a just-released U.S. Census Bureau study, a jaw-dropping 49.1% of U.S. households have at least one person in the home receiving some type of government benefit (source: Wall Street Journal, May 26, 2012).

In 1983, this survey from the Census Bureau revealed that a much lower 30% of households received some type of government benefit. Thirty years later, there has been a 64% increase in the number of people receiving some form of government assistance! So much for that economic recovery!

The government benefit most cited that a member of a household received was Medicaid, followed by food stamps.

The study suggests that, as more people struggle to make ends meet in this supposed economic recovery, families are forced to live together under one roof (very common in Europe), creating more and more multigenerational households than in the past, which again does not point to an economic recovery.

A recent study by The National Center for Education just released a study that confirms that economic recovery hasn’t showed up. The unemployment rate among full-time high-school students is the worst it has been in 20 years!

Thirty-two percent of high-school students held a job in 1990, as compared to just 16% today. The reason for the 50% drop in school students with job: it has to do with retired people.

Retired people are worse off financially today than they were in 1990, which means the retirees need to take on jobs to make ends meet. The elderly are pushing high-school students to the side! To young people, there is no economic recovery!

The National Center for Education also noted that 52% of full-time college students worked in 2000, but now only 40% do, as fewer jobs are available.

A survey from Rutgers University illustrates how the economic recovery has not taken hold. The survey reveals only 53% of college graduates have a full-time job.

The unemployment rate for college graduates in this country is at the highest it has been in years. And we are to believe an economic recovery is underway?

The Census Bureau is concerned that, at this level of government assistance—49.1%—taxes are going to have to rise in order to continue paying out all of these benefits to people in need. Of course, with this weak economic recovery and a high unemployment rate, people will not accept higher taxes.

Until real jobs are created, we cannot say we have a true economic recovery. Until then, we are just stuck in quicksand, sinking deeper and deeper, until we reach the point where we won’t be talking economic recovery, but we will be talking the next recession. (See: The 2013 U.S. Recession…

Just when the U.S. economy and the housing market are turning up, Europe’s sovereign debt bomb critically injures global capital markets. That’s my biggest fear going forward and it’s a very real possibility. The U.S. stock market would be quite a bit higher if there was more certainty in the eurozone.

Something has to give with Greece. Even with substantial austerity measures, that country’s finances are unsustainable. The bond market is priced for absolute safety right now and, in a sense, it’s expecting the worse. The stock market is in correction and the only thing holding it up is its reasonable valuation. And it’s not as if Greece declaring bankruptcy is that much of a shock, it’s the risk to the euro currency that’s the problem.

So, the domestic stock market continues to be held hostage by sovereign debt problems in the eurozone. Of course, the U.S. also has a sovereign debt problem, but it’s fixable as long as there’s the will to do so. Regardless, if you’re a country with sovereign debt that’s greater than your gross domestic product (GDP), it’s a big problem. It’s like cascading credit card debt; paying off the monthly balance with another credit card. It’s a very difficult cycle to get out of.

Right now, a lot of the economic news from Europe is showing virtually no economic growth. Recession or zero growth is now in the eurozone. While I view the U.S. economy to be in a continued recovery, Europe’s sovereign debt problems are likely to be the catalyst for the next U.S. recession. I still am worried about geopolitical risks associated with Iran and Syria, in regards to their potential impact on capital markets. Right now, the U.S. stock market is okay, holding its own with fair valuations and a decent corporate outlook. See Stock Market Correction: Why it’s Limited. But if eurozone policymakers don’t come up with an orderly plan for Greece’s future, then our pocketbooks are going to be in further trouble.

What the stock market is looking for now is more certainty on Greece’s future. Unfortunately, stock market investors don’t really care about fixing the sovereign debt problem in the eurozone. They just want things sugarcoated so they can get through the next quarter. This is why this problem is likely to be prolonged and investment risk in the stock market will remain high.

Usually, by the time we get into second-quarter earnings season, companies are able to predict how their businesses will fare for the rest of the year. I think S&P 500 companies will once again beat consensus this earnings season. Forecasts for the bottom half of the year will be …

Spain has an unemployment rate of 25%, which is startling given the dire financial condition of the ninth largest economy in the world and the fact it’s in its second recession in three years. Even worse, the youth unemployment rate is a staggering 51%. No jobs translate into less spending. Retail sales in Spain plummeted 9.8% in April, according to the National Statistics Institute. The decline represented 22 straight months of contraction. The retail picture also looks somewhat cloudy in the U.S., which I discussed in Retail Picture Remains Cloudy. (PC051012)

The massive reduction in spending means stagnant economic growth, which in turn translates into less tax revenue for the government at a time when the national debt is 712 billion euros or about $892 billion. That’s about $19,391 per citizen. Now the Spaniards need to deal with the country’s debt and muted growth; but, compared to the situation in the U.S., it doesn’t look that bad. The U.S. has nearly $16.0 trillion in debt or $50,101 per citizen. That’s huge and we all realize the financial mess the U.S. is in, but then that’s another story.

The reality is that Spain is critical to the eurozone in terms of its size and importance in the region’s economic engine. If Spain fails, as was the case with Greece, the aftershocks will likely be significant not only to the eurozone, but also the global economies, including China, which is Spain’s sixth largest trading partner since relations started in 1973. The European debt crisis and muted growth in the eurozone have impacted China and in turn the Asia-Pacific region. Lower consumption in China means less demand for foreign goods made in Asia, the eurozone, greater Europe, the Americas, and other key trading partners.

According to the Bank of Spain, the Spanish economy will contract until the end of the second quarter. I think the growth will remain negative or flat at best. For the year, Spain is estimated to see its economy contract by 1.7% and will impact the eurozone.

At risk is the country’s banking system. When the economy is contracting and people lose their jobs, you know that, after seeing it here, the banking system will be impacted. Bankia, Spain’s fourth-largest bank, is currently seeking a record bailout of 19 billion euros, or about $23.88 billion, in order to deal with the massive amounts of bad loans on its balance sheet.

Bankia had been a private bank that was partly nationalized in May 2012 by Spain after the bank nearly went broke, so there is some baggage already with this bank.

Spain must halt the rise in the country’s debt yields. The 10-year yield is …

With technology stocks in the hot mobile sector active in developing new technologies, some companies like Research In Motion Limited (NASDAQ/RIMM) are being left behind. With market share for Research In Motion (RIM) in the first quarter 2012 in the smartphone market sector now estimated to be only 6.4%, down from 13.6% in the first quarter of 2011, the company is continuing a massive decline.

As I previously wrote in the article, Beginning of the End for RIM?, the “BlackBerry” maker has massive problems. Just released were reports that more job cuts are coming down the pipeline. Some estimates range from 2,000 to 6,000 layoffs out of a global workforce of 16,500. Technology stocks that aren’t growing and are bloated need to cut the excess fat, no question. These rumors helped the stock move up slightly, as many investors (myself included) believe the end goal for new CEO Thorsten Heins is to clean up the firm and sell it before it’s too late. The last thing other technology stocks want is to buy a bloated firm that’s only a small, marginal player in the market sector.

In addition to job cuts, there are reports of an additional write-down of $1.0 billion, due to a massive inventory glut, since no one is buying these phones. None of this has been confirmed by the company yet. In the mobile phone market sector, there is heavy competition, including the just-released “Galaxy S3” phone by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., a technological marvel, in addition to the upcoming “iPhone 5” by Apple Inc. (NASDAQ/AAPL). These phones put any RIM product far behind the technological curve. The market sector is advancing rapidly and RIM is simply too far behind to catch up.

However, the aggressive job cuts and write-downs, if they were to occur shortly, would be positive for the stock. This would finally mean that management at RIM has thrown in the towel and is ready to sell the firm to one of the other technology stocks. With a cash pile of just over $1.5 billion, it had better hurry before its market sector decline starts to eat into this cushion. With quarterly losses in the smartphone market sector of 26% expected for this quarter, on top of a similar decline last quarter, the end appears near and a sale needs to be done quickly.

Chart courtesy of www.StockCharts.com

The stock has performed poorly when compared to other technology stocks. This of course makes sense when one looks at the market sector decline that RIM has encountered. There are some value investors thinking that the stock price could move up. The chart shows a lot of resistance on the …