Wishing it was true doesn't make it true--it makes you a chump who fell for the con.
Once upon a time in America, no adult could survive without possessing a finely tuned BS detector. Herman Melville masterfully captured America's fascination with cons and con artists in his 1857 classic The Confidence-Man, which I discussed in The Con in Confidence (October 4, 2006).
An essential component of the American ethos is: don't be a chump. Don't fall for the con. And if you do, it's your own fault. The
Wild West wasn't just thieves shooting people in the back (your classic
"gunfight" in the real West)--it was a simmering stew of con artists,
flim-flammers and grifters exploiting the naive, the trusting and the
credulous.
We now inhabit a world where virtually everything is a con. That
"organic" produce from some other country--did anyone test the soil the
produce grew in? It could be loaded with heavy metals and be certified
"organic" because no pesticides were used during production. But what
about last year? And the year before? What's in the water used to
irrigate the crops?
The employment/unemployment statistics are obviously BS. 93
million people aren't even counted any more--they're statistical
zombies, no longer among the living workforce. If the unemployment rate
were calculated on the number of full-time jobs and the true workforce
(everyone ages 18 - 70 that isn't institutionalized or in prison), the
unemployment rate would not be the absurdly delusional 5.6% claimed by
the bureaucratic con artists.
The corrupts-everything-it-touches bribe
vacuum known as Hillary Clinton is still disgracing the national stage,
24 years after she first displayed her con-artist colors. Hillary's
most enduring accomplishment is the Clinton Foundation--a glorification
of bribery, chicanery, flim-flam and cons so outrageously perfected
that it serves up examples of every con known to humanity in one form or
another.
And as she learned from hubby Bill--if the smarmy charm-con
fails, quickly revert to veiled threats. "You'll never work in this town
again!"
Hillary would fit right into Melville's river boat teeming with con-artists. The
accent she uses on the marks--oops, I mean audience--changes as readily
as the camouflage on a chameleon. Upper Midwest, Noo Yawk,
Fake-Southern--what you hear depends on the credulity of her marks.
The entire American political system is a con, a sleazy mix of legalized bribes, auctioning
off of favors, revolving doors between government agencies and the
corporations they enrich and the blatant hypocrisy of snake-oil
salespeople who know the marks (voters) face a false choice between two
parties that are the same poison sold under different labels.
Which brings us to China, one of the greatest credit bubble and financial cons ever. Please examine this chart of the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSEC). Clearly, there is no upper limit to the Chinese stock market: 5,000 today, 10,000 next week, 50,000 the following month and 100,000 shortly thereafter. The sky's the limit, Baby!
That China's credit machine is now dependent on a
stock market bubble for its very survival speaks volumes about the true
health of China's economy. This dependence was recently explained in Why China Is So Desperate To Blow The Most Epic Stock Bubble.
Everybody who thinks China's economy is healthy because its stock market is soaring has been suckered. Every good con-man/ con-woman knows that the con only works if the chump/mark wants to believe the impossible is true--that
the snake-oil remedy will actually cure their ailments, that the "hope"
candidate will actually change the corrupt system from the inside
(ha-ha, they fell for it), and that China's economy is on its way to
becoming the world leader in everything.
Many people want to believe this fantasy because it suits their agenda: For American pundits, China isn’t a country. It’s a fantasyland.
But wishing it was true doesn't make it true--it makes you a chump who fell for the con. We
want to believe our political system isn't an unreformable cesspool,
that our economy is a vibrant creator of new middle class jobs and that
China will manage the greatest credit bubble in history without a hitch.
But these are all cons put over to protect the wealth and power of
those benefiting from the con.
If your BS detector isn't shrieking, it's broken. You've been conned. Wake up.
