Blue Truth Prophet Exposed as Fraud
The Top 1% Hold 50 Times the Value of Stocks as the Bottom 50%.
At some panel discussion, you have Jose Vega—running for Congress in NY-15 against none other than “NY-15’s own AIPAC airhead, Rep. Ritchie Torres,” who’s lounging atop a sweet $1.8 million as the top New York recipient of AIPAC cash. Good thing money has no influence on “our democracy,” right?
Then there's Paul Krugman, the Blue Truth economist par excellence. He spends his days leaving no stone unturned in his quest to conflate the performance of the New York Stock Exchange with the overall health of the U.S. economy. Sure, he knows better, just like Larry Summers—co-author of a paper that’s an exercise in studied academic idiocy, with its ironically revealing “Anomaly” in the title: The Cost of Money is Part of the Cost of Living: New Evidence on the Consumer Sentiment Anomaly. The opening line says it all:
The economy is booming, and everyone knows it — except for the American people.
You can practically smell the Ivy League privilege wafting off the page. For almost half of the American population, however, here's the real news flash:
The economy sucks, and everybody knows it — except for the ruling elites and their Ivy League economists.
Now let's talk about the “booming” economy that Krugman and Summers are so eager to sell:
The richest Americans own the vast majority of the US stock market, according to Fed data.
The top 10% of Americans held 93% of all stocks, the highest level ever recorded.
Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of Americans held just 1% of all stocks in the third quarter of 2023.
Oh, and where’s this coming from? No, not the latest revision of Marx’s Das Kapital, but good ol' Business Insider—the capitalist's gossip rag—where you can find plenty more such illuminating little tidbits.
Here is what Jose Vega had to say when he confronted Krugman at a public forum:
Uh oh, “No-Ball” Prize-winning economist here to tell us how great the economy is. I certainly wonder how the residents of Asheville, North Carolina, must be feeling right now with no access to power, water, or communication with the outside world. I wonder how enthusiastic they are about the economy right now.
I wonder how enthusiastic the residents of the South Bronx must be feeling about the economy. Hey, maybe North Carolina should rename itself Israel so it’ll get $20 billion in aid, or maybe Ukraine so it can get $300 billion in aid. Maybe the South Bronx should do the same thing.
I’m sure the economy is great for smug liberals like yourself... I’m sure the economy must be great for all you smug journalists, economists. All of you must be having a great time with the economy, when most people can’t even pay for basic necessities, for people who are getting evicted because they can’t pay their rent. Because over in the South Bronx, just a few miles from here, there are portions of buildings that are literally collapsing.
And I’m supposed to give a shit about the stock market?
It takes a highly educated, Nobel (or should we say No-Ball) Prize winning economist to respond to somebody who exposes the bipartisan priorities of the the U.S with:
So, the Trump lies have gone viral.
It takes a highly decorated economist to distill a well-placed critique of bipartisan neglect into a petty retort about “Trump lies.” Blue Truth on full display—partisan hackery at its finest.
But don’t think for a moment that the Red Truth will be outdone. Enter Lindsey Graham, high priest of the GOP, delivering his own sermon:
I’ve been going all over South Carolina, like most people I haven’t slept much. But look what’s going on in Israel. … a second Holocaust in the making … They are running out of ammunition in Israel. We have to help our friends to keep the war over there from coming here.
Ah, the “keep the war over there so it doesn’t come here” argument—the last refuge of the warmonger. The ultimate catch-all, used in every conflict from the Cold War to Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine—you name it.
No cliché too tired for the Entitled States of Amnesia!