The Department of Truth, a.k.a. the Ministry of Propaganda, issues a stream of massaged/manipulated data to support the mind-bending "perception" that the economy is in "a real recovery." Does anyone outside the lapdog mainstream media take the bogus employment statistics seriously? It's so painfully obvious that the "headline unemployment number" is manipulated via removing millions of people from the workforce, and removing the unemployed from the statistical ledger once their benefits expire.
What with the bogus "recovery," a couple of hot wars and an utterly dysfunctional and corrupt political system, the Ministry of Propaganda has been quite busy of late. Housing has bottomed--once again, for the third time since 2008. And we really really really are exiting Afghanistan and Iraq--soon--please ignore those permanent bases and proxy armies.
It doesn't matter if the Fed or Federal government apparatchiks really believe that managed perceptions can replace reality: they have no choice but to hope perception can become reality.
In other words, faith in the legitimacy of the institutions which report on the economy and in those institutions on which the economy depends.Unfortunately, all these institutions are in tatters: all are in various stages of delegitimization: the Federal oversight agencies, the Fed, Congress, the Executive Branch, the ratings agencies, the financial sector, and of course the lapdog mainstream media.
I once saw a yellowed newspaper from Thanksgiving, 1935. the headlines proclaimed "growth has returned and the worst is over." It was all lies, of course, mere propaganda issued in the abject fear that the populace might become restless if the nation's institutions confirmed what people could see with their own eyes.
When the current stock market bubble pops, the last shreds of the Fed's legitimacy will be blown away. Strip away all the distractions, and the Fed's entire campaign to "restore confidence" and "animal spirits" so that the "recovery" magically becomes "self-sustaining" is based on one thing, and only one thing: the current stock market rally.
I once saw a yellowed newspaper from Thanksgiving, 1935. the headlines proclaimed "growth has returned and the worst is over." It was all lies, of course, mere propaganda issued in the abject fear that the populace might become restless if the nation's institutions confirmed what people could see with their own eyes.
When the current stock market bubble pops, the last shreds of the Fed's legitimacy will be blown away. Strip away all the distractions, and the Fed's entire campaign to "restore confidence" and "animal spirits" so that the "recovery" magically becomes "self-sustaining" is based on one thing, and only one thing: the current stock market rally.