In "Too Much Kool-Aid in the Eggnog," I wrote: "as is typical this time of year, optimism is on the upswing, and many commentators have convinced themselves that the next 12 months will be better than the last." I then highlighted three reports from America's front lines that suggested otherwise.
As it happens, the following chart seems to confirm that a jump in buzz about better times ahead has become something of a seasonal trend -- which doesn't necessarily comport with the reality on the ground.
Of course, this time could be different -- right?
Are the commentators "paid to play" or living in a free market?
Financial Repression
As a practical matter, this assumption of mainstream financial journalism is probably correct. But the world might begin to change, however slowly, if journalists tried putting the questions to central bankers in public settings anyway and reported their evasions or refusals to answer. Eventually investors and even the public might come to understand that great power, the power to control the prices of all capital, labor, goods, and services in the world -- that is, the power to control the price of everything, absolute power -- was being exercised in secret so that the world more easily might be expropriated, that democracy had been crushed, and that, as a mere high school graduate remarked a few years ago, "There are no markets anymore, only interventions."
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2011/12/chris-powell-financial-repression.html
Posted by: Adjustment bureau | December 30, 2011 at 11:28 AM