The Immense Suffering Caused by Financial Devolution
by ilene - August 21st, 2009 1:52 am
The Immense Suffering Caused by Financial Devolution
Courtesy of Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds
While the mainstream financial press crows about the "end of the recession" and the rising stock market, the suffering caused by financial devolution gets short shrift.
Longtime correspondent Azvitt recently submitted these links to stories on the human toll of financial devolution. While these articles show the mainstream media is covering the emotional toll of bankruptcy, foreclosure and loss of income, what is missing is the recognition that widespread suffering will not be going away "because the recession is over."
A surge in corporate profits and thus in the stock market does not mean millions of jobs will suddenly open, or that the collateral/equity which has been lost will return.
The mass media’s lack of context is willful. Not only is it "un-American" to dwell on "the negative," it’s also bad for business because confidence and euphoria is what causes consumers to spend, spend, spend and advertisers to buy, buy, buy those adverts which support the media.
While sorting through an old trunk of my father’s belongings, we found a stack of yellowing newspapers from the 1930s, collected when he still a lad. (He had two newspaper routes and once told me he made more money than his father did selling insurance.) The top paper was from Thanksgiving day, 1936, and the headline blared, "Prosperity Index Rises."
Yes, they had phony "proof the Depression is over" stories then, too. In fact, the most salient point about the mass media in the 1930s is how rarely it addressed the Depression directly. The effort was all to create an illusion of normalcy and positive spin. This cheerleading was undoubtedly considered the media’s "patriotic duty."
The Depression was to run another five years from this headline announcing that the "Prosperity Index Rises." And it only ended because the Federal government borrowed trillions of dollars (in today’s money) and put millions of people to work in a vast global war machine.
As a personal aside, I would like to note that I have been down to my last $100 twice: in the Great Recession of 1973-74, and again in the Next Great Recession of 1980-82. My partner and I paid our employees with credit card advances in tough spots in the early 80s, and I…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site