Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Imagine historians 25 years from now looking back on one of the worst economic periods since the Great Depression and finding that the Wall Street Journal was calling this a “Goldilocks Economy” – “not too hot, not too cold.” (They can’t actually bring themselves to say “just right” to stay on script with the fairy tale.)
On September 7, 2014 the Wall Street Journal went with this headline: “The Upside of August’s Jobs Report: A Goldilocks Economy.” The next day, in a blog post, this appeared: “Stocks rallied Friday following the disappointing jobs report as those hoping for a Goldilocks economy (not too hot, not too cold) cheered.”
During the Great Depression, headline writers were admonished not to use the phrase “Great Depression” but to go with the more benign “hard times.” The theory behind the use of the phrase “Goldilocks Economy” at the Wall Street Journal seems to be: move along, nothing more to see here in the way of a depressed economy so just forget about extending unemployment benefits or increasing the minimum wage or helping homeless families. That’s so not cool in the age of casino capitalism where the winner takes all – by hook or by crook.
On Monday, the U.S. Education Department released statistics showing that 1.3 million homeless children were enrolled in school in the 2012-2013 school year – an increase of 8 percent from the 2011-2012 period. And the numbers likely undercount the severity of the problem as the study notes that it does not include homeless infants, toddlers or children too young to attend school.
Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau reported the following on the number of individuals still living in poverty in our country: “In 2013, there were 45.3 million people in poverty. For the third consecutive year, the number of people in poverty at the national level was not statistically different from the previous year’s estimate.”
The same week the new poverty numbers for the U.S. came out, the latest data on newly minted billionaires was released by Wealth-X and the UBS Billionaire Census 2014. Naturally, the U.S., global haven of casino capitalism, boasted the most newly minted billionaires, adding 57 to bring its total to 571 billionaires out of a global total of 2,325.
…
