When rigged numbers are the basis of our success, we have failed.
The essence of the U.S. economy is make it look good: never mind quality or long-term consequences, just make it look good today, this week, this month, this quarter: make the pink slime look like meat, make the company look profitable, make the low-quality product look good enough to close the sale, make the unemployment rate low enough to justify re-electing the toadies currently in power, make the body count of bad guys look good, and on and on--just makes the numbers look good now, the future will take care of itself.
This is, of course, an attractive lie: the future is a direct consequence of present decisions and actions. It is remarkable how quickly we latch onto the notion that an endless parade of lies, manipulations and deceptions will magically produce a warm and fuzzy future of organic growth fostered by sound investments.
Alas, an economy that relies on an endless parade of lies, manipulations and deceptions has only one possible future: failure--abject, total, undeniable, devastating. Equally remarkable is the current conviction that absurd extremes in manipulation--the billions of dollars of corporate buybacks pushing stocks higher, the socialization of the U.S. mortgage market, where privately issued mortgages (unbacked by government guarantees) have virtually vanished, the ginned-up unemployment number (remove enough potential workers from the count and the unemployment rate is soon near-zero)--will magically lead to an economy that no longer needs extreme manipulations to sustain itself.
All these lies (if we are bold enough to call a lie a lie) and manipulations cannot possibly herald in an economy of honest reporting, market discovery of price and sound investments.
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