Memo to Bernanke: It's Called Blowback, Baby

05-06-2011 • OfTwoMinds.com/blog

But there is another kind of blowback brewing in the U.S.: the negative consequences of massive covert manipulation of the domestic economy by the Federal Reserve and agencies of the Federal government. A key feature of propaganda is the "documentation" presented to support a politically advantageous distortion. In this case, the statistical support for the "recovery" rests on three numbers: 1. the stock market 2. the Federally issued jobs report 3. the GDP In all cases, the numbers are doctored in a coordinated covert campaign to persuade the public that the economy is growing smartly. The stock market has doubled as a consequence of a declining dollar and other policies of the Federal Reserve designed to incentivize speculation in "risk trades" such as stocks and "carry trades" in currencies. I have broken down the distortion many times, for example: The Stock Market As Propaganda (March 10, 2010). The jobs report is heavily reliant on the "birth-death model" of small businesses, an opaque Federal guesstimate of the number of new small businesses being started and those being closed. As reliably as clockwork, hundreds of thousands of "created out of thin air" jobs...