Ignorant Americans Keep Falling For Manufactured Economic Crises

by Monica Davis

Ignorance of economics continues to make the American public vulnerable to propaganda and news manipulation. The nation continues to reel from one crisis to another. This  neverending cycle of fear, paranoia and reactionary politics generates a manufactured crisis which makes the nation vulnerable to propaganda and instigated political emnity.

Crises don’t “just happen”. They are instigated and the public is manipulated.  The public: that’s us.

price/profit manipulation of stocks are a large part of what’s driving crises issues.  Those manipulations are not created by the average investor, who doesn’t hold enough financial power to cause huge shifts, but by wealthier investors, who do.  Hope and marketable shifts in public attitudes are talked up by brokers and media shows to create investment in stocks which then rise.  Then comes a manufactured “crises” which will, predictably, cause uncertainty.  The wealthy investors, who filled their portfolios at lower prices, now sell those shares and the average investors, who were only able to buy as the stock was rising, are put on an unavoidably losing trajectory.  At best one can only hope to tread water by having bought a valuable stock early enough that it’s basic price can’t fall much lower than what it was purchased for.  That can only be done by choosing established companies with high budgets that are integral to societal needs. READMOREHERE

One left wing pundit has set high goals for himself this year. But, are the American people willing to use their brains, instead of letting a biased media lead them around by the nose?

One of the things that I hope to successfully convey as Congress proceeds from the pooch punt that averted that “fiscal cliff” (that Congress created so that they could heroically avert it) to the fiscal crisis moment slated for March of this year, it’s that debt ceiling hostage takers are dangerous psychopaths. Yes, we can trace instances of Congresscritters shaking the chandeliers on the debt ceiling going back many presidential terms — heck, there was once a senator from Illinois named Barack Obama who troubled the Bush administration over it. It was a dumb idea then, as it is now.

But what’s changed to make things worse is that this is no longer mere idle talk and procedural bravado — there are people in Congress who truly see default as an ideal alternative to having to concede any points in what should be a rational process of negotiation and deal-making. Rep. Michele Bachmann made her willingness to destroy the global economy for the glory of Tea Party Caucus a central selling point for her presidential candidacy. And now, legislators who were once considered reasonable have become enablers to the lunatics. (And unfortunately for everyone, a key enabler to this madness has been that former Illinois Senator, who opened the door to negotiating over the debt ceiling back when he was still hopeful of a “grand bargain” on the debt.)

But the enabling isn’t just happening in Congress, it’s happening in the media, as well, which is why another thing I would like to make clear is that those who see debt ceiling lunacy as a legitimate side in a debate or just one more interesting point of view among many are just as culpable in what could be a pending economic calamity as the lunatics themselves. I’m not alone in this concern. Greg Sargent has done a fine job outlining the logical fallacy behind legitimizing debt ceiling hostage taking and notes in particular that by and large, the media has framed the entire fiscal debate incorrectly: READMOREHERE