The NEW U.S. Economic Mythology

February 27, 2017

The Corporate media lies to us, all of the time. This is not an assertion, merely an elementary observation. With a real “free press”, we see occasional moments where different media outlets may agree on the interpretation of particular events and/or the relative importance of events. All other times, we see a divergence of opinion between media outlets.

This is what we would expect to see. Homo sapiens are a contrarian species. We all have our own ideas – or at least we used to.

What do we see with the Corporate media today? We see a small collection of gigantic corporations which control everything we see and hear. That’s called an oligopoly. It is not even legal. And with rare exceptions, we see these gigantic corporations saying the same thing, all the time.

That’s not a free press. That’s a propaganda machine. And when a propaganda machine repeats the same message over and over, we have a name for that too. We call it brainwashing.

For example; for many, many decades, marijuana was supposedly one of the Demon Drugs. Not only did it pose several grave perils to our health, but it was a “gateway drug”. Let little Johnny or Janey get their hands on a joint, and next thing you know they would be shooting heroin.

Was any of that true? Of course not. It was all propaganda.

Today, we know that marijuana’s active ingredients have many benign and even therapeutic applications. As jurisdictions across North America now begin legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, the only difference being noticed by the governments of those jurisdictions is more tax dollars in their coffers – and less-crowded jails.

We’re not only fed legal propaganda and brainwashing, we’re also subjected to economic brainwashing. And nowhere do we see more intense brainwashing than with respect to the Mighty U.S. Economy.

For many, many years, when the U.S. economy was genuinely prosperous, successive U.S. governments had an overt and explicit “strong dollar policy”. A strong currency was good. Having each dollar in a consumer’s wallet stretch farther was good, because that consumer could buy more goods.

However, when the evil Alan Greenspan and his successor B.S. Bernanke were ordered by their oligarch Masters to begin to rapidly dilute and debase the U.S. dollar, the elementary logic of a strong-dollar policy became inconvenient for the oligarchs. New propaganda had to be invented.

Suddenly, a strong currency was bad. “Competitive devaluation” became the new mantra of the U.S. government and the subordinate puppets across the Western world. It was good to have a weak currency. It was good for each dollar in a consumer’s wallet to be devoured by inflation. It was good for consumers to buy less and less goods because their dollar was shrinking – not stretching.

It never made any sense. But the brainwashing has been repeated to us over and over, year after year, and so we (most of us) believe it.

Then these same oligarchs decided to manipulate the U.S. dollar upward , pushing it to absurd heights versus almost every currency on the planet. Has the (new) “strong dollar” hurt the U.S. economy? Apparently not, because what we hear every minute of every day is that the Federal Reserve is on the verge of pulling the trigger on higher interest rates because the U.S. economy is so damn strong.

Then we have oil.

For many, many years; we have been told that high oil prices are bad. Why? Because we use oil (directly or indirectly) in almost all human economic activity. Dramatically pushing up the price of a primary economic input is like a tax on the economy. Indeed, the mainstream media has often uttered precisely that phrase: “higher oil prices are a tax on the economy.”

Just as it is elementary logic that a strong currency is good, it is also elementary logic that high oil prices are bad – bad for everyone except oil producers. But this logic is suddenly no longer convenient for the oligarchs, so once again they have ordered their media foot soldiers to invent new propaganda. Note the speed with which this new propaganda message has been injected into the Corporate media megaphone.

The crazy idea that higher oil prices might be good for the economy right now

That propaganda headline was rolled out less than a year ago at the Washington Post. See how audacious this propaganda machine has become. It acknowledges that the mere suggestion that high oil prices might be good is crazy. Then the propaganda mouthpiece who wrote this propaganda goes on to “explain” to the insipid sheep reading the article why high oil prices are actually a good thing.

Scarcely more than six months later; we see this propaganda headline from the hardcore brainwashing machine known as Bloomberg News.

What Will Lift World Economy? Goldman Says Higher Oil Prices

Suddenly, the “crazy” idea that higher oil prices are a good thing is no longer being introduced in a sheepish, almost apologetic manner. Now it is being presented to us as the new wisdom, uttered by none other than the economic sages (i.e. compulsive liars) of Goldman Sachs.

We’re brainwashed with various forms of ludicrous mythology on a regular basis. The point of this article is not to merely point out that the Corporate media has once again been caught passing off ridiculous lies. That’s nothing more than another “dog bites man” story.

The real importance of pointing out the New U.S. Economic Mythology comes in looking past the mere propaganda itself. There could be no possible reality where imposing a “tax on the economy” could be good for the economy. It might be good for the government collecting the tax, but it’s certainly never good for the economy itself.

How has the propaganda machine endeavoured to pass off this ridiculous lie? Why has the propaganda machine been told to pass off this ridiculous lie?

First the “how”. Why are high oil prices now supposedly “good for the economy”, when this could never possibly be true? It’s because – get ready for this – there is “not enough inflation”. There’s nothing at all new about that lie. The prostitutes of the Federal Reserve have been peddling this nonsense for years. From 2013, and once again from Bloomberg :

Why the Fed Worries Inflation Is too Low

Regular readers already know that this is a heinous lie. Inflation is economic cancer . Inflation is exactly like “a tax on the economy” because as with a tax, it claws away our purchasing power. It is impossible for a human being to have “not enough cancer”. It is impossible for an economy to have “not enough inflation”.

Making this lie especially heinous is that we have much too much inflation. Food prices are soaring at a double-digit rate, with only brief lulls between the next explosion in prices. Housing prices are soaring higher at a rate never before seen in our lifetime. We have far too much inflation, yet the liars of the Corporate media and the liars of the Federal Reserve and the liars of our puppet governments tell us there is “not enough inflation”.

So why bring oil into this? Why try to pass off two utterly absurd lies together, simultaneously? We need higher oil prices because there is not enough inflation.

To understand the necessity for the Corporate media to attempt to pass off two ridiculous lies simultaneously requires turning back the clock a few years, back to when the U.S. government chose to manipulate the price of oil to a rock-bottom level. That’s what we were told.

Barack Obama publicly boasted that lower oil prices were “part of the U.S. strategy” to punish Russia. Of course in reality the actual manipulation of oil markets was carried out by the banking crime syndicate, known to regular readers as the One Bank . But the bankers kept oil prices too low for too long.

Russia is still standing. However, a few more months of $30/barrel would have completed the vaporization of the much-hyped U.S. shale oil sector. That would have been embarrassing for the oligarchs. Shale oil had to be saved. Oil prices had to rise. But now another problem.

How does the Corporate media continue to pretend there is a “U.S. economic recovery” as oil prices rise significantly? How can the Federal Reserve continue to pretend that it’s “about to raise interest rates” with oil prices rising? More potential embarrassment for the oligarchs and their lackeys.

New mythology was necessary. Higher oil prices are good (a lie) because there is not enough inflation (a lie). And those lies are now necessary because the Corporate media has been ordered to continue to pretend there is a U.S. recovery (a lie) and pretend that the Federal Reserve is “about to raise interest rates” (a lie).

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

One caveat on the last of the Big Lies currently being passed off about the U.S. economy. It is possible that the Federal Reserve may suddenly begin to normalize interest rates – once their oligarch Masters give them the word that it’s time to torpedo the U.S. stock market bubble.

Warren Buffett is 86 years old, and currently sitting on a cash hoard of $85 billion vampire-dollars. Those two numbers both tell us that the Next Crash is coming sooner, not later.

The views and opinions expressed in this material are those of the author as of the publication date, are subject to change and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of Sprott Money Ltd. Sprott Money does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, timeliness and reliability of the information or any results from its use.