Archive for August 2011
Mainstream Media Can’t Be This Stupid…Can They?
Let me begin by stating that I am not a blind critic of the media. I worked in Television News as an Anchor, Reporter and News Director for over a decade and was involved in electronic and broadcast media for nearly 15 years. I loved my profession and my job. I left the industry for a number of reasons one of which included the change I was seeing in how the news was being delivered and what I call the “commercialization” of news.
I had the unpleasant experience of having a general manager of one of the stations I worked for try to kill a revealing and negative story about a local merchant who also happened to be one of the station’s biggest advertisers. After much consternation and debate the story won the day but with a compromise that a particularly damning sound bite not be used on air.
It was then that I realized how much money and politics could effect the news content of the day even at the local level.
It’s been more than 5 years since I left the business and I can only say things have gotten worse not better. The news is skewed and leaning hard left. Except over at FOX which leans hard right. Unfortunately this doesn’t help the situation and does not provide balance it simply gives the two sides a place to go for THEIR news. Not good.
All of that leads into a story I read today from a financial guru and investment adviser named Bob Wiedemer. Wiedemer appears to be a conservative minded individual but what he says is neither conservative nor liberal. It’s simply the truth and for some reason our watchdogs of the 4th estate can’t seem to grasp it, or is it something else. I don’t want to go as far as to imply that facts are intentionally being misreported, but if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck….
The economic recovery being touted as “under way” by the media is simply a bunch of hot air. Boloney. Hogwash. Bullshnike… It doesn’t exist and the numbers prove it. And here they are.
Image via Wikipedia
The “recovery” is made up of only stimulus funds. It is a result of massive government borrowing and spending. Here are those numbers.
In 2007, the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) totaled $14 trillion. In 2010 the GDP totaled $14.6 trillion dollars. A net increase of $600 billion. Viewed on its own, $600 billion in three years is not very good, but on the bright side, its a rebound that tracks above inflation, slightly.
Compare that however to the increase in government borrowing. In 2007, the U.S. government borrowed and spent $163 billion. In 2010 it borrowed and spent almost $1.4 trillion, a net increase of over $1.2 trillion.
The spending binge (on borrowed dollars) is also what’s propping up the stock market i.e. printed money the quantitative easing strategy of government bond buying, the second round of which ended June 30th. The fact is when the Fed prints new dollars the market responds with an upswing. When the Fed stops printing dollars it drops. The stock market recovery is as fake as the economic recovery. Driven by unsustainable irresponsible government idiocy. It’s not based on hard-nosed analysis of the economy and its underlying capacity for growth, it’s based on printed money pushing up stock values beyond any true economic recovery. You want a glimpse of the future of the stock market? Look at the housing market.
The golden question? Besides the obvious, why is the media ignoring the real story; how are we going to pay back all the borrowed cash? The answer: we can’t. Not even if every dollar earned by every American taxpayer was paid in taxes for the next decade. The bubble economy is about to pop and when it does inflation, the crash of the dollar, and, heaven forbid, the elimination of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. None of it good.
But you won’t hear that from those friendly smiling faces on your TV screens. Nope. They’re too busy admiring the Emperor’s new clothes.
Related articles
- The Largest Bubble in U.S. History (anationbeguiled.wordpress.com)
- Recovering From a Balance-Sheet Recession (economix.blogs.nytimes.com)
- THIS CAN’T BE GOOD: U.S. Borrowing Tops 100% Of GDP: Treasury. “The new borrowing took total publ… (pajamasmedia.com)
Information for this blog post was found in the Financial Intelligence Report a monthly financial news letter. You can subscribe at moneynews.com This blog does not endorse or represent moneynews.com.
The Long Version 