China And The US Duel In The Media For The Title of "Propaganda Masters"

03-09-2011 • ZeroHedge.com

Earlier, when we penned the post "In Anticipation Of Our Own "Department Of Truth" we disclosed some very blatant examples of media manipulation by the Chinese propaganda bureau. We left that piece with an open ended query of when we may see comparable "information" massaging in the U.S. We didn't have to go too far to demonstrate a rather clear domestic example. A recent article by Bloomberg's Susanne Walker and Wes Goodman titled "China Adding to $1 Trillion of U.S. Debt Caps Rise in Rates" made the following bold statement: "Investors outside the U.S. have boosted their holdings of longer-maturity Treasuries to the highest level since the credit markets froze in 2008, helping curb rising yields amid concern inflation is accelerating." The data massaging, in case it is not clear, has one goal only: to instill the reader with the impression that foreign buyers are stepping in to buy US debt, despite inflation concerns, and make the role of the Fed's relentless monetization of virtually all US gross debt issuance seem less relevant in response to the recent letter by Bill Gross highlighting precisely the opposite. The authors go on to say: "The shift toward long-term debt shows bond buyers outside the U.S. agree with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s assessment that inflation will be contained even as global food and energy prices soar. Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., warned last week that yields on Treasuries are too low with inflation accelerating and the central bank planning to complete $600 billion in asset purchases in June." Alas in their attempt to validate their thesis Walker and Goodman make the blatant mistake of comparing Chinese holdings data from before and after the just announced TIC data holdings revision. To wit: "China, the largest investor in U.S. government debt after the Fed, increased longer-term notes and bonds by 39 percent to $1.145 trillion in December from a year earlier, while its stake in bills declined 78 percent to $15.4 billion, the most recent Treasury data show." Alas, in making that statement, it confirms how clueless the authors are in interpreting ever critical Treasury data. We can only hope this error was made without premediation, or else we can now conclude that the Department of Truth is now actively manipulating "data" in our own backyard, to reach pre-determined goalseeked conclusions.