"Face Value"
Fraud, scams, lies and other election year modi operandi...
by Bill Bonner
Youghal, Ireland - "In private life, misinformation is a mischievous delight. We bluff at cards. We wear lifts in our shoes. We embellish our resumes and exaggerate our affections. But, in public life, lies are a damned nuisance. Hold on…
This morning, it is gray and rainy. Just as it was yesterday morning. And the day before. We escaped the winter of Maryland for the winter of Ireland. Here it is not as cold. It rarely snows. “If ye want snow, go back to America,” explained a taxi driver. “If it snows here, the whole country comes to a halt. We have no snow plows. Not even any salt trucks. We just wait for it to melt.”
There were traces of snow in the mountains when we arrived. But it rained all weekend, a terrific storm, with high winds coming off the Atlantic and falling tree limbs. The West Coast – in County Clare and Galway – got hit hard, with power outages, trees down and flooding. For us…we just keep a cozy fire in the kitchen; and a pot of tea ‘on the hob.’ Meanwhile…
Fraud and Farce: In the news today, the Chinese are taking a page out of America’s "Handbook for Fooling the Public". It’s the Greenspan Put! By law, the government is going to make stocks more valuable. Bloomberg: "China Weighs Stock Market Rescue Package Backed by $278 Billion." "Chinese authorities are considering a package of measures to stabilize the slumping stock market, according to people familiar with the matter, after earlier attempts to restore investor confidence fell short and prompted Premier Li Qiang to call for “forceful” steps.
In China, they are proposing to manipulate asset prices by taking money from a number of sources, including state-owned businesses, and buying stocks. In America, the authorities did a kind of trifecta of deception: printing fake money, lending it at fake rates, to produce fake prices on Wall Street.
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Fraud is the key element of almost all public policy. It is not the icing on the cake; it is the sugar and the flour. We have a ‘defense’ department that is expected to protect us from foreign attacks. But since foreigners rarely attack us, we attack them. And now, fresh from its victories in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US firepower industry begins a new war against its most pathetic enemy yet – a desert tribe that doesn’t even control its own sh*thole country. Maybe this one will be a winner.
All for the Worse: At home, we spend trillions on various programs that are nothing more than boondoggles and giveaways. The Inflation Reduction Act, for instance, had nothing to do with reducing inflation; instead, it gave a big dollop of tooth-rotting subsidies to ‘green energy’ lobbyists while helping to raise consumer prices at the fastest rate in 40 years.
Fraudulent, scammy, counterfeit – public policies almost invariably make things worse. And we can’t afford them anyway. We are supposed to have a marvelous economy, but that too is a scam; we cannot afford to pay for current programs, let alone pay off those from the past. At the apex of so much tomfoolery is the money that enables it. No longer an asset, since 1971, the US dollar is a liability. It is a promise by the largest debtor on the planet to pay up. With what? More fake money. As much as needed.
And now…investors, in keeping with the spirit of mendacity, are ready for it. They believe the Fed will cut its key lending rate. Yesterday, the Dow hit a new all-time high. USA Today: "Wall Street hits record high following a 2-year round trip scarred by inflation." "Wall Street returned to record heights and capped a punishing, two-year round trip dogged by high inflation and worries about a possible recession that seemed inevitable but hasn’t arrived."
A Fake Calm - Meanwhile, inflation is going down everywhere – imports, producer prices, retail prices, wholesale prices, energy, food, consumer expectations, business expectations – you name it. (WHAT?!!! - CP) And according to the real-time Truflation index, it has dropped from over 6% in 2022 to just 1.85% today. (Absolutely total lies! - CP) That’s under the Fed’s 2% target. What’s going on? We’ll know more later, but for now we seem to be in a saccharin spot…a fake calm somewhere between real disasters. The big question is whether the Primary Trend really did change in July 2020…or whether that too was just another fake-out. After all, it’s an election year; you can’t take anything at face value. More to come…"
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