“His [Ben Bernanke] continuing denial that QE wrought damage suggests it is he who cannot handle the truth.
Correlation of 1 across all asset classes combined with high leverage & narrow exits means catastrophically fast implosion, sooner or later.
What i am trying to point out is that markets and even the Fed are acting on unreliable,overoptimistic official data (aka fake news).
World trade contracting,growth stalling, but CNBC advertisers, Bloomberg customers & political leaders don’t want downbeat news. Market illusions.
BEA uses own unique, low deflator (never CPI) to get higher inflation adjusted GDP growth rate, higher consumer spending, hiding feeble real growth.
Most jobs data cherry picked, manipulated, guessed. Declining payroll tax deductions published every day ignored. Job gains illusion.
Occasional glimpses of real economic news reminds how misleading is WH economic recovery spin and its adoption in the form of MSM fake news.
Financial leverage higher now than 2008, systemic risk greater, most jobs created part time, median income down, debt multiple, wealth gap bigger, etc.”
One of the few academics that gets it. Shame he is so old.
The real question is this:
If Trump represents change (unclear, but that’s the promise anyway), what happens if his administration orders more honest measures of economic well-being?
People know things aren’t swell. But when the markets finally do turn down (indicating that social mood has begun its long-awaited dive from the stratospheric heights at which it hovered these past years), people normally blame whoever is “in charge.”
If Trump is blamed, what happens next? Does it discredit any hope of actual change? Do we go back to the phenomenally destructive systems that dug the hole in which we now find ourselves?
This crap scares the hell out of me.
Most people — even many of the libs — know that the official numbers of inflation, unemployment, etc., are garbage. Perhaps the best thing for Trump to do is to announce that “yes, the numbers are wrong. They lied about them to cover up how bad things are. Here are the REAL numbers…”
Some people would panic, some would deny it — but most people would rather have some honesty, even if the news is bad.