Your Corruption Smells of Destruction
This society's ultimate undoing will be the fact that it turned a blind eye to Wall Street after 2008. Zero reforms whatsoever and then making a mockery out of Occupy Wall Street. Fatal mistakes...
Consumers Are Confident That They Can Bankrupt Their Grandchildren
Just today, we learned that consumer sentiment is at its highest level since July 2007. That, despite the fact that government debt is $7 trillion greater than it was six years ago. To put that in perspective, that is almost $100k of additional debt per four person family. In addition, there are still 2 million fewer jobs than there were back then, even though the population is now significantly larger.
BLS is BS
But what can we say about a system wherein the unemployment rate actually goes down when people give up looking for work. Only people actively seeking jobs are counted in the headline unemployment rate (U3). At this rate, one can certainly imagine a day when unemployment goes to zero. Meanwhile, even the former head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the employment numbers are totally phony. The unemployment rate should be about 4% higher, so it's only wrong by about a relative factor of 50%. And that's not even adjusting for those who have given up looking for jobs, as mentioned above - when you factor them in (aka. U6 unemployment rate), then total unemployment is ~17% v.s. the stated 7.6% !!!
The Idiocracy Borrowed $100k Per Family To Buy A New Dow high and more "CONfidence"
What Else Is Phony? ...Or I Should Say, What Isn't ?
All of this obfuscation and bullshit, got me thinking, what else about this society is fake...
A Phony Culture - If while in conversation, you happen to deviate from one of three pre-approved topics - consisting of sports, entertainment gossip and something else, but I forgot what it was, then you are some sort of hippy, anarchist, deviant outcast. In elite yuppy circles, you may substitute politics for sports...
Case in point, are the shrink wrapped zombies I talk to at my kids' soccer game even real? If so, why do their eyes roll into the back of their heads whenever I deviate from the standard script? Someone should look into that...
A Phony President - nearly identical to the last one - physical appearance aside: permanent tax cuts for the wealthy, never-ending military occupations, continued over-spending on the military at the expense of everything else, increased drone attacks, continuous intrusions on civil rights, failure to reform Wall Street (a major campaign contributor), turning a blind eye to relentless corporate outsourcing, and non-stop bullshit speeches/campaigning and positioning for the next election...Meanwhile did Snowden just "defect" to Russia, fearing for his human rights ? The irony of it all can't be overlooked. Faux News Pravda has taken over the U.S...God help us all...
A Phony Congress - filled with the biggest perma-smiling buffoons this society could find, after searching high and low. Apparently anyone who can't get a real job, is supposed to go into politics. I didn't get the memo. And what is their approval rating right now ? 12%
So, how the hell can these apologists in the media tell us with a straight face that the system is working when it has a fucking 12% approval rating? I don't know anything else in the realm of human experience where that can be possible:
"How's your lunch?"
"I give it a 12 out of 100"
"Well then, we should come here more often..."
"How's your lunch?"
"I give it a 12 out of 100"
"Well then, we should come here more often..."
A Phony Economy and Stock Market - see rest of blog...
Although I would add that a phony economy and phony stock market would in no way be possible if it were not for the phony society desperate to believe in the impossible.
A Phony Media - outside of Congress, all remaining vacuous blowhards please report to the media. It's another unwritten rule. And now presenting over 2000 cable TV channels of mindless bullshit for your delight and entertainment. If you are anything like me, by the time you flip through channel 1 - 2000 and finally realize there is once again nothing on, then it's time for bed...
Fakery - By No Means a U.S. Only Phenomenon
The catalyst for this blog post was this article below describing how things look a year after Mario Draghi shooed the speculators away from the European debt markets by promising to come in and buy garbage debt. Of course all he really did is send a memo to Goldman Sachs saying it was safe to initiate the mother of all carry trades funded in cheap US dollars to buy Spanish/Italian debt. This article asks the ultimate phony question - "do we think that things are better now that debt levels and unemployment are higher than they were a year ago?"
A fake society with its head planted squarely up its own ass certainly can't complain when all of "this" fakery comes crashing down out of the clear blue sky...
