Mainstream media talking heads try to sell inexperienced investors on Vampire Rally --> downplay and minimize the bad news and pump the good news
Friday, January 6, 2012 at 8:28 AM by Bill Baker, J.D.
Editor and Publisher, The San Bruno Beacon
The mainstream media was hard at work this morning spinning a December jobs report junk number in an attempt to manipulate investor sentiment to invite new sucker money into the equity markets. The real truth is that from an economic standpoint, things are very bad and getting much worse as the U.S. and world economies continue to contract as a result of being buried under a growing mountain of debt and interest.
The headline news being hyped is that nonfarm payrolls rose by 200,000 in December and that the unemployment rate dropped to 8.5% in December 2011. These U.S. Government Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) job reports are notoriously unreliable.
The main problem with the BLS unemployment number is that it measures unemployment claim data. A 12/08/2011 Smart Money article titled, Is the Real Unemployment Rate 22.6% points out that the BLS numbers do not include tens of millions of unemployed workers who are no longer receiving unemployment benefits.
The BLS nonfarm payroll numbers can also be misleading in that they don’t tell you if high paying or low paying jobs are being created. For all we know, the 200,000 nonfarm payroll increase number (which is not correct) could be reporting 200,000 new minimum wage jobs wrapping Christmas gifts or handling Christmas gift returns.
One Bureau of Labor Statistics report that hasn't seen a lot of play in the mainstream media is the12/22/2011 MASS LAYOFFS -- NOVEMBER 2011 report. In this report, the BLS reported:
“Employers took 1,331 mass layoff actions in November involving 129,887 workers, seasonally adjusted, as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.”
That report didn’t make front page headlines.
Some other important stories buried in the news are:
January 6, 2012 – Alcoa Falls After Announcing Capacity Cuts
January 6, 2012 – Best Buy December sales fall
January 6, 2012 – ECB Steps in as Italian Yields Hit 7%
January 6, 2012 – Euro-Zone Fears Grow on New Data
Once again, the mainstream media is buying into and headlining the same types of lies, half-truths and market manipulation being promoted by the vile Wall Street hype merchants looking for fresh sucker money and a failing, desperate President who will quite literally do or say anything he can to get re-elected. On the other hand, the mainstream media is burying the bad news.
As long as inexperienced investors buy into Wall Street's big lies; the cycle of pain, suffering and retribution will never end. Perhaps, it is time to require all stock market investors to take a series of stock investment courses and be certified as investors before they are allowed to spend one penny of their money on a share of stock.
