Fat Cats, Skinny Dogs

I heard the economic lie again this morning on ABC News, how Wall Street was not impressed by the latest jobs report. The talking head doing the report made the remark matter-of-factly, as if the only thing that matters when it comes to economic news is whether or not Wall Street approves.

To all but the dullest or most ideologically deranged Americans (politicians from both corporate parties fall into this latter category, though I exempt Senator Bernie Sanders), it’s clear that Wall Street and the interests of citizens have nothing in common. Wall Street is about stocks, bonds, investors, obscene executive salaries, insider trading and outright fraud, while Main Street is about jobs and wages, the price of gasoline, milk, meat, health care and college tuition.

But almost all mainstream media reporting about the economy focuses on Wall Street investors, the wealth created by trading shares or commodities, credit default swaps and the like; this is sold to citizens by the corporate megaphone as the equivalent of the real economy where the majority of us live and work, but we know better -- workers don’t receive zero-strings attached taxpayer bailouts, and in fact only receive federal unemployment benefits grudgingly, after brutal political mud wrestling in which one party is forced into absurd concessions for the sake of the other’s ideological hard-on.

Corporations own the media, and media do the corporate chieftains’ bidding, parroting the boardroom line and narrowing the news focus so that Americans can have no idea of what is going on in their own country, let alone around the world. We know plenty about the Royal couple, Kim Kardashian’s pregnancy, Beyonce’s philosophical proclamations, any number of salacious murder trials, and what shows are on the prime time TV schedule, but far too little about climate change, our burgeoning prison population and racist justice system, the cost of college tuition and health care, food and other necessities.  

To top things off, by his latest budget proposal, President Obama appears very willing to roll the dice on Social Security in the hope that by doing so he can extract GOP agreement to raise taxes on the wealthy who have been enjoying a decades long tax holiday. Obama’s head appears to be buried in Bill Clinton’s behind, for remember it was Slick Willie who triangulated his way to NAFTA, the crime bill, and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act; Clinton never hesitated to sell Democrats down the river, and neither does Obama.

It’s absolutely maddening, a daily assault on one’s intelligence. When a hack like Jim Cramer is afforded more airtime and credibility than real economists like Joseph Stiglitz or Richard Wolff, you know you are living in a nation fearful of confronting itself; better slick hype and fantasy than the unsettling truth that the economy is not recovering for average working folks, only for the fat cats in the penthouse suite.