Winston Churchill had a lot to say about truth in his day. Any number of famous quotes derive from his opinion on that topic. "There are a lot of lies going around," he once said, "and half of them are true." And further he noted: "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." And "in wartime," he said, "truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."
The last few months some of the most respected minds in the blogosphere have labored to expose the lies that mask the truth about what has happened to the economy, and why. Forsaking mainstream media news, their own research has exposed a phalanx of lies and deception, from fudged employment numbers by the BLS, to clever accounting rules changes at the banks, to sly Fed programs to buy up treasuries and even secretly purchase stock futures to bolster and manipulate the market. Details of the TARP bailouts and other Fed programs remain hidden. The results of the AIG investigation are quietly to be sealed for 12 years. On and on it goes--one cover-up after another, one lie used to conceal another.
There is no question that some of the assertions made by bloggers like MISH, Karl Denninger, Charles Hugh Smith, Jim Quinn, Chris Martenson, Matt Tabbi, Ilargi, James Kunstler and so many others have their diligent minds around a nub of the truth. They have bravely challenged what might be called the prevailing wisdom of the mainstream media, which is really nothing more than an agenda serving the corporations who own the news shows. They have shown, statistically, that the so called "recovery" trumpeted by the mainstream is false.--nothing more than a concoction of government spending and well doctored reports. And over recent months more noted minds from academia have shown solidarity in voicing similar opinions. Pulitzer Prize winning economist Joseph Stilgitz recently noted the strange divergence of opinion between those talking up the market and the reality of the Main Street economy. Bill Gross, the managing director of Pimco, the world's largest bond fund, went so far as to call the whole economy a "Ponzi scheme."
Yet, in spite of their efforts at exposing lies and uncovering truth, much of the web discourse that gets such heated debate in the blogosphere remains largely unknown to the public at large. As influential as they might be, the blogs only command the attention of a small percentage of the population. Sadly, most people simply don't read. They don't read newspapers,or magazines in the mainstream media, and they certainly don't read the blogs. Instead of digesting news on what I consider to be the salient issues of our time, the great heist of public funds to bailout the wealthy, most people have little understanding of what has happened, and little interest in the subject. They much rather prefer to muse on who will be the next American Idol, or what will happen to Tiger Woods, or some other aspect of our ridiculous pop culture. And you will note that the opinions and general world view of those who read the blogs daily will differ sharply from those who do not.
Thus the whole effort of blogging on these serious economic topics out of some notion that the truth matters has become a kind of exercise in futility at times. Bloggers expose the lies, skewer them with charts, statistics, rational arguments. But the bottom line is that nothing really changes. The Bloggers are tilting at windmills. Their followers are really a small group of the intelligencia that is basically of like mind. In short, they are preaching to the choir. Bloggers call for prosecutions, investigations, audits, the abolition of the Fed. They want Geithner's head on a platter and would happily tar and feather Bernanke if they could. At the proverbial "end of the day," however, the powers that be, those who really control the money, do what they please. Let's face it: The Fed is not going to permit an audit, and it certainly won't be abolished. The "too big to fail" banks are not going to be broken up. Goldman Sachs will go merrily on with its predatory trading model. The BLS is not going to suddenly report real unemployment figures, and MSNBC and Fox are not going to report real news either. So why bother? I write 24 articles per year, (one every two weeks), and in recent years these have mainly been about the economy. Why bother? No one pays me a nickel for this work.
I suppose the bloggers continue to fight the good fight because their own intellect and character commands that they do this, and oppose the ubiquitous falsehood, fraud and deception out there. It was well said that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. One Blogger leads his daily soap box post with this quote: "As long as certain twisted souls feel the need to lie, cheat and murder to achieve their ends, some of us need to keep pointing it out." So, like well meaning agents, they aim to break through that bodyguard of lies and find the truth. Because in the end there is no version of the truth...it is not a matter of anyone's opinion. It is simply what is. Finding that truth is what blogging is all about for many, thankless job that it often is, and perhaps they take heart from one other thing Churchill said on the subject:
"Truth is incontrovertible, ignorance can deride it, panic may resent it, malice may destroy it, but there it is."
The last few months some of the most respected minds in the blogosphere have labored to expose the lies that mask the truth about what has happened to the economy, and why. Forsaking mainstream media news, their own research has exposed a phalanx of lies and deception, from fudged employment numbers by the BLS, to clever accounting rules changes at the banks, to sly Fed programs to buy up treasuries and even secretly purchase stock futures to bolster and manipulate the market. Details of the TARP bailouts and other Fed programs remain hidden. The results of the AIG investigation are quietly to be sealed for 12 years. On and on it goes--one cover-up after another, one lie used to conceal another.
There is no question that some of the assertions made by bloggers like MISH, Karl Denninger, Charles Hugh Smith, Jim Quinn, Chris Martenson, Matt Tabbi, Ilargi, James Kunstler and so many others have their diligent minds around a nub of the truth. They have bravely challenged what might be called the prevailing wisdom of the mainstream media, which is really nothing more than an agenda serving the corporations who own the news shows. They have shown, statistically, that the so called "recovery" trumpeted by the mainstream is false.--nothing more than a concoction of government spending and well doctored reports. And over recent months more noted minds from academia have shown solidarity in voicing similar opinions. Pulitzer Prize winning economist Joseph Stilgitz recently noted the strange divergence of opinion between those talking up the market and the reality of the Main Street economy. Bill Gross, the managing director of Pimco, the world's largest bond fund, went so far as to call the whole economy a "Ponzi scheme."
Yet, in spite of their efforts at exposing lies and uncovering truth, much of the web discourse that gets such heated debate in the blogosphere remains largely unknown to the public at large. As influential as they might be, the blogs only command the attention of a small percentage of the population. Sadly, most people simply don't read. They don't read newspapers,or magazines in the mainstream media, and they certainly don't read the blogs. Instead of digesting news on what I consider to be the salient issues of our time, the great heist of public funds to bailout the wealthy, most people have little understanding of what has happened, and little interest in the subject. They much rather prefer to muse on who will be the next American Idol, or what will happen to Tiger Woods, or some other aspect of our ridiculous pop culture. And you will note that the opinions and general world view of those who read the blogs daily will differ sharply from those who do not.
Thus the whole effort of blogging on these serious economic topics out of some notion that the truth matters has become a kind of exercise in futility at times. Bloggers expose the lies, skewer them with charts, statistics, rational arguments. But the bottom line is that nothing really changes. The Bloggers are tilting at windmills. Their followers are really a small group of the intelligencia that is basically of like mind. In short, they are preaching to the choir. Bloggers call for prosecutions, investigations, audits, the abolition of the Fed. They want Geithner's head on a platter and would happily tar and feather Bernanke if they could. At the proverbial "end of the day," however, the powers that be, those who really control the money, do what they please. Let's face it: The Fed is not going to permit an audit, and it certainly won't be abolished. The "too big to fail" banks are not going to be broken up. Goldman Sachs will go merrily on with its predatory trading model. The BLS is not going to suddenly report real unemployment figures, and MSNBC and Fox are not going to report real news either. So why bother? I write 24 articles per year, (one every two weeks), and in recent years these have mainly been about the economy. Why bother? No one pays me a nickel for this work.
I suppose the bloggers continue to fight the good fight because their own intellect and character commands that they do this, and oppose the ubiquitous falsehood, fraud and deception out there. It was well said that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. One Blogger leads his daily soap box post with this quote: "As long as certain twisted souls feel the need to lie, cheat and murder to achieve their ends, some of us need to keep pointing it out." So, like well meaning agents, they aim to break through that bodyguard of lies and find the truth. Because in the end there is no version of the truth...it is not a matter of anyone's opinion. It is simply what is. Finding that truth is what blogging is all about for many, thankless job that it often is, and perhaps they take heart from one other thing Churchill said on the subject:
"Truth is incontrovertible, ignorance can deride it, panic may resent it, malice may destroy it, but there it is."
