Where is the US economy headed?

Competitive salaries for clinical psychologists

As of 2008, the BLS reports that clinical psychology positions, categorized under the clinical, counseling, and school psychology job sector, earned a median wage of $64,140. For clinical psychologists working in the offices of other health practitioners, that median wage rises to $68,400.

But salaries rise even higher as individuals in this field earn more credentials, experience, and certifications. The highest 10% of clinical psychology professionals earn more than $106,840, according to the BLS. These individuals are licensed in their respective states - a requirement for all who want to work as clinical psychologists -and many have achieved additional certification in areas such as psychoanalysis, rehabilitation, forensic, group, school, clinical health, and couple and family psychology.

The middle 50% of all clinical, counseling, and school psychology professionals earn between $48,700 and $82,800

She has achieved her PhD in Psychology. The going rate for practitioners out here in the Bay Area is anywhere from 75-125 dollars an hour. She specializes in working with Autistic children, an area for which there is currently a great demand, due to the behavioral difficulties associated with the disorder - and one which is rising, as diagnoses of Autism have rocketed upwards in the last decade.Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

She has achieved her PhD in Psychology. The going rate for practitioners out here in the Bay Area is anywhere from 75-125 dollars an hour. She specializes in working with Autistic children, an area for which there is currently a great demand, due to the behavioral difficulties associated with the disorder - and one which is rising, as diagnoses of Autism have rocketed upwards in the last decade.Cycloptichorn

Is there any better evidence as to why our cultural and economic outlooks are growing more grim? You support all the other evidence that our educational system for one thing is being burdened more and more by cultural or emotional problems of children. I hear this from more than one teacher in our circle of friends and acquaitances. According to them, much of this has been brought on by broken and dysfunctional families, live-in situations, boyfriends mistreating their live-in's children, the list goes on. There is no family stability as there used to be, and kids go home to TV to find their nurture, parents on drugs, the list goes on. Near my business location, there is a man that runs a counseling service, I believe he is also a degreed psychologist. The guy has a fluorishing business because he has an inside track with local courts, with judge or judges sending young people that have gotten into trouble with the law, to him for required counseling. We've talked about the younger generation and his clients, and in general his opinion is that the younger among us have a difficult time relating to real people, even conversing with people, because they have grown up interacting with TV, computers, cell phones, and all of that. Of course not every kid is messed up, but on average it might explain in part why higher percentages are having more problems.

To make a long story short, it does appear your wife is in a field that will enjoy a healthy demand for a good long time, and unfortunately much of the demand will be paid by taxpayers in one way or another. Some of the work will be through the school systems and some will be paid via the costs of simply maintaining law and order within our society.

All of this points out why I have expressed the opinion in the past on this forum, and I believe it more than ever, that our economic problems are really very closely tied to our societal or cultural problems, such as broken homes, single parent households, drug use, etc.

Quote:

Same goes for your estimate of the future value of your wife's education.

Well, all I can say to that, is that if the current going rate for her profession was HALF what it currently is, the math still works out that her schooling is profitable in the long run. Not only that, it affords her the opportunity to work in a profession she cares about, at a high level. So, I would say that our estimates of the value of this purchase have very large tolerances, and all available evidence shows that the choice was the correct one.

Re: the purchase of realty, as usual, you are telling only a small part of the story. The truth is that what made those purchases attractive were unregulated insurance products on those purchases - products which Republicans long claim didn't need to be regulated, which were specifically chosen by Bush not to be regulated, and which imploded spectacularly. It wasn't the drop of the housing market that stranded investors - it was the collapse of their insurance assurances.

A decidedly odd statement coming from one who asserted that debt always leads to future gain.

The truth is that borrowed money DOES lead to prosperity - but only in the short-term.

However the widespread Federally subsidized securitization of mortgages was the chief factor that led to excessive capital inflows to the mortgage market

I do not know if autism comes under a behavioral disorder or not, but I think it can manifest itself behaviorally.

It is when, not if. Financial markets merely aren’t sure whether it’ll be tomorrow, a month’s time, a year’s time, or two years’ time (it won’t be longer than that). Given that the ECB has played the “final card” it employed to force a bailout upon the Irish – threatening to bankrupt the country’s banking sector – presumably we will now see either another Greek bailout or default within days.
What happens when Greece defaults. Here are a few things:
- Every bank in Greece will instantly go insolvent.
- The Greek government will nationalise every bank in Greece.
- The Greek government will forbid withdrawals from Greek banks.
- To prevent Greek depositors from rioting on the streets, Argentina-2002-style (when the Argentinian president had to flee by helicopter from the roof of the presidential palace to evade a mob of such depositors), the Greek government will declare a curfew, perhaps even general martial law.
- Greece will redenominate all its debts into “New Drachmas” or whatever it calls the new currency (this is a classic ploy of countries defaulting)
- The New Drachma will devalue by some 30-70 per cent (probably around 50 per cent, though perhaps more), effectively defaulting 0n 50 per cent or more of all Greek euro-denominated debts.
- The Irish will, within a few days, walk away from the debts of its banking system.
- The Portuguese government will wait to see whether there is chaos in Greece before deciding whether to default in turn.
- A number of French and German banks will make sufficient losses that they no longer meet regulatory capital adequacy requirements.
- The European Central Bank will become insolvent, given its very high exposure to Greek government debt, and to Greek banking sector and Irish banking sector debt.
- The French and German governments will meet to decide whether (a) to recapitalise the ECB, or (b) to allow the ECB to print money to restore its solvency. (Because the ECB has relatively little foreign currency-denominated exposure, it could in principle print its way out, but this is forbidden by its founding charter. On the other hand, the EU Treaty explicitly, and in terms, forbids the form of bailouts used for Greece, Portugal and Ireland, but a little thing like their being blatantly illegal hasn’t prevented that from happening, so it’s not intrinsically obvious that its being illegal for the ECB to print its way out will prove much of a hurdle.)
- They will recapitalise, and recapitalise their own banks, but declare an end to all bailouts.
- There will be carnage in the market for Spanish banking sector bonds, as bondholders anticipate imposed debt-equity swaps.
- This assumption will prove justified, as the Spaniards choose to over-ride the structure of current bond contracts in the Spanish banking sector, recapitalising a number of banks via debt-equity swaps.
- Bondholders will take the Spanish Banking Sector to the European Court of Human Rights (and probably other courts, also), claiming violations of property rights. These cases won’t be heard for years. By the time they are finally heard, no-one will care.
- Attention will turn to the British banks. Then we shall see…

It's looking more and more likely that the Greek government will eventually fail to make payments on its bonds on time and in full—in other words, default is looming. Traders put a more than 70 percent probability on a Greek sovereign default some time in the next five years, judging from the prices they're paying for protection in the credit-default swap market. The question of the hour: Should Europe keep fighting to postpone the inevitable or begin arranging for an "orderly" default that causes the least possible collateral damage?

The case for delaying a default is that European banks need more time to repair balance sheets that were devastated by the 2007-09 financial crisis. The profits they're earning now are rebuilding their capital. The longer that Greece can be kept afloat, the better Europe's banks will be able to withstand the losses they'll be forced to recognize if Greece goes under. European banks and the European Central Bank have a strong incentive to extend and pretend.

Those who favor a default now say that European governments—and hence, ordinary taxpayers—are throwing good money after bad by extending fresh credit to Greece to keep it afloat. They point to Uruguay's 2003 restructuring, which extended bond maturities by five years at the original interest rates, as a success story. New York University economist Nouriel Roubini has been pounding the table for a Greek debt restructuring since last June.

Greece's problems are much worse than Uruguay's, so the haircut suffered by banks and other creditors would have to be deeper. But let's be clear: The damage from bad policy has already been done. There is no painless way out of Europe's mess.