I had the radio on on the way home tuned to WABC. It's a short tide and bout 10 - 15 minutes is usually all of Sean Hannity I can take in a day so it works out well. I also happened to catch the 5:00 News break. It's a rather jarring transition going from the fervently conservative Hannity to the completely liberal ABC News.

So the report came on that the stock market, specifically the Dow Jones Industrial Average, had closed above 13,000 for the first time in history. In the second sentence they introduced an economist who said that the record really meant nothing in terms of the strength of the economy. Because economic growth has really been chugging along rather slowly (he failed to mention that it has done so for about 6 straight years). No mention was made about high employment numbers a less than 25% of the population directly own stock so what the Dow does is really meaningless for the average American. (No mention of the tens of millions of average Americans who indirectly own stock through IRAs, 401Ks, pensions and mutual funds.) And really if what the Dow does means so little - why is it reported in the news EVERY DAY.

No the average American is suffering under a housing slump and high gas prices. The market results are just driven by corporate profits - which are up. And we all know that when corporations make money, average Americans suffer. Because corporations that are making money would never take some that money and invest it in doing more of the things that are making them money. They would never increase payroll to ramp up production and distribution in hope to make even more money. They would take that money, pool it together with all of the money from all of their corporate pals and finance their schemes to keep the little guy down.

Damn the man. And ABC News.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 12:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment