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In Today's Risk-Filled Markets, Can You Afford to Be Misled By Fantasy Financial Reporting?
I’m writing this article today out of anger, yes, anger. Here’s the latest offering of a steaming pile of cow dung that passes for financial journalism that I stumbled across the other day:
“The headlines say the financial crisis is behind us. The Dow is back to pre-financial crisis levels. Layoffs are the slowest since the financial crisis, and car sales the highest since the financial crisis. So why are Americans still too scared to get back in the stock market?... A broad measure of the stock market, the Standard & Poor's 500 index, is up more than 20 percent from last October. The index has more than doubled since March 9, 2009, the low point for stocks during the Great Recession.”
Every time I read lies like the ones above, I get angry. I get angry at the irresponsibility of the journalist spreading such lies. I get angry at the possibility that ignorant financial consultants may read that journalist’s quotes and wrongly beg their clients to dump money into the US stock market now. I get angry at the journalist’s blatant deception in quoting that the S&P 500 has doubled recently as a means of trying to trick people into thinking they are getting left behind in a new powerful bull stock market, and I get angry at the blatant baiting of the journalist whose statement above is likely meant to bait people into move their idle hard-earned cash into the broad US stock market indexes at an inherently dangerous time to do so. But mostly, I’m angry that such tripe and lies are even allowed to pass as investigative journalism. It’s funny that the author of this article is merely listed as the Associated Press and that this article doesn’t even have a specific attributed author. Perhaps the author knows that he is writing such rubbish that he does not even want to be identified for writing it. I don't get angry if a journalist writes insightful, critical financial journalism and just happens to offer an opinion that is wrong. I've been wrong, you've been wrong, and we've all been wrong about our predictions in the past and will continue to be wrong about our predictions in the future at times. It is when I suspect that financial articles are written as pure propaganda and with the deliberate intent to deceive the public that I get mad.
Let me deconstruct every lie in his paragraph above.
“The headlines say the financial crisis is behind us”. Yes, the mainstream media headlines do say that the financial crisis is behind us but this is pure fantasy. The only reason the headlines state this is because financial and banking shills are the ones that are writing them. The reality is that we are just moving into the second phase of this global monetary crisis right now and that those that don’t adequately prepare now may spend the rest of their lives trying to recover. I will explain some of the reasons why this is reality and why the journalist’s view is not.
“Layoffs are the slowest since the financial crisis, and car sales the highest since the financial crisis.”
As British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was fond of saying: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Statistics can be distorted to deceptively prove a point and this is exactly the journalistic crime this author has committed. While layoffs may have decreased to the slowest rate since the financial crisis, this statistic is a relative one and certainly is not indicative of a recovering economy as the journalist implies. In fact, the unemployed and underemployed rate in the US is 23% (Source: Shadowstats). Zerohedge recently reported that U.S. youth unemployment is currently about 46% – the same as Greece - making this figure the worst in 64 years and 7% worse than when Obama took office. But the economy is recovering and stock markets are rosy, right?
"Car sales [were] the highest since the financial crisis."
Light car sales for 2011 in the US totaled 12.8 million units. But wait, didn’t the author say that car sales in the US were the highest since the “financial crisis” in 2008? The facts? Total light vehicle sales in the US in 2008 were 13.2 million units, considerably higher than 2011 year totals. But if you change the year that the financial crisis started until 2009 or 2010, then one can make the claim that US vehicle sales are now the highest since the “financial crisis”. Furthermore, the author makes no mention that the “stellar” 2011 auto sales in the US were still a near staggering 25% lower than the nearly 17 million in annual vehicle sales that were the norm in auto sales in the US from 1997 – 2007. But who are we to spoil the "recovery" message of the bankers with the truth and facts?
And what about the author’s comment that the S&P 500 index has more than doubled since 2009? Yes, one can tell the truth and still be unbelievably deceitful. You can take any low and any high from any index to really twist the truth of the overall larger picture and the real picture that affects most investors. Since most commercial investment firms find holding cash to be highly distasteful since they only earn fees from money that is invested and not money that is sitting in cash, it is highly doubtful that most financial consultants had their clients sitting in 100% cash for more than 20 months since the peak of the S&P 500 in July 2007 of 1555 until it bottomed at about 666 in March of 2009. Thus, the likelihood that people invested in the S&P 500 index actually doubled their money from March 2009 until present day and had a net 100% gain is likely nil.
And though the author states that the US indexes are back to pre-financial crisis levels, this hardly tells the real story. Go back to March of 2000 when the S&P 500 level peaked at 1552.87. If you diversify and buy & hold, the two hard-sell mantras of the commercial investment world, you ALWAYS make money, right? Wrong. Today, 12 years later, at 1371.09, all 12 years of buying and holding and diversifying would have earned you is a hole in the pocket and a net loss of -12%. However, even this negative figure still doesn’t tell the complete story. Price the US indexes in gold and silver, that is in real money, as you can see here, and since 2001, the S&P 500 has lost more than 85% against BOTH silver and gold!
If this journalist that wrote the article “PSYCHIATRIST: Here's The Real Reason Everyone Is A Doomer These Days” ever identifies himself, I’ll be happy to put up my public track record against his any day of the week and see who comes out on top for accuracy over the past 6 years. I am positive that this journalist would disparagingly, and with derision, label me as a “doomer” although I know that my views are more realistic than the views of all the fluff analysts in the world combined. Back in April 28th of 2008, I wrote an article, “Will US Markets Crash Now or Later?” that, at the time, contained a realistically negative view of US markets at that point and time, a view for which mainstream financial journalists derided me due to all the signs that pointed to a continuing economic recovery according to their shoddy version of financial journalism. Less than 18 trading days later after I wrote this article, the S&P 500 began a descent that didn’t stop until it shed about 50% of its value, thereby validating my realistic view and invalidating the fantasy views of mainstream financial journalists.
Despite all the “recovery” nonsense being promoted by banking shills in the media today, and despite trillions of virtually free money being thrown at EU banks and US banks, western stock markets are NOT stable today and have NOT risen recently on any fundamentally sound principles. In fact, western stock markets are just as “at risk” now as they were back in April of 2008, though the recent more than 1 trillion Euro QE execution, courtesy of the ECB LTRO program, may now push this risk further out than I anticipated before this latest QE injection. But understand one thing. This massive printing of trillions of Euros and dollars has baked massively higher inflation into the cake down the road, and like the failures of these unsound monetary decisions during the past several years, these unsound monetary decisions will once again fail in the future. In conclusion, I leave you with two videos that should place the final nail in the coffin regarding the main point of this article – that authors that pen pieces like “PSYCHIATRIST: Here's The Real Reason Everyone Is A Doomer These Days” are a complete joke and an embarrassment to the profession of journalism. A minimum of fact checking and modicum of investigative journalism would easily prevent this journalist from offering an unrealistic spin on the economy. But today, almost every financial journalist that is published in the mainstream media prefers to be steered by their controlling interests into being a “cleaner”, scrubbing clean the facts and hard evidence of every financial crime scene and instead, opting to present a rosy, unrealistic, fantasy outlook of stock markets and the global economy. These journalists that have no respect for their profession should all be rounded up and forced to participate in a “fantasy” finance league, because this is where they all belong. The "real reason" everyone is a doomer, or more aptly put, a realist today is not because people are more negative today, as the journalist of that article claims, but it is because, thank God, people are finally awakening today and realizing that most financial mainstream reporting is heavily censored tripe by banking controlling interests.
The first video is a trailer for a new movie called “Unraveled” in which a prominent NY attorney was caught perpetuating a massive financial fraud by, in his own words “borrowing new money to pay off old money.” Is this not EXACTLY what nearly every Central Bank of every major economy is now doing, with the slight twist that Central Banks are creating new money out of thin air to pay off debts on old money they can't afford? And if this created disaster for a one man Ponzi scheme, and was, as admitted by this NY attorney, patently and blatantly fraudulent, why does not a SINGLE financial journalist employed by the mass media condemn Central Banks for committing fraud, but instead laud the “fake” recovery that borrowing new money to pay off old money creates?
The second video below is self-explanatory for the revelations of an economic “pundit” that the media always lauds for his “recovery” declarations that have now been laughably wrong for six years running.
About the author: JS Kim is the Founder & Chief Investment Strategist of SmartKnowledgeU, a fiercely independent investment research & consulting firm that aims to expose the fraud of Wall Street while informing his clients of the truth of investing and the best ways to build wealth with gold and silver every year, using strategies that are in direct opposition to the deceitful marketing campaigns of Wall Street. To learn more about his flagship Crisis Investment Opportunities newsletter, a newsletter that has returned more than a cumulative 202.88% gain from inception in 2007 until March 5, 2012, please click here.
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Actually, you can't afford not to play unless you are saving in physical. What's anybody to do but buy "break outs" with trailing stops. And then do it over, and over, and over again - even if the net market price is flat.
Rumors are so important in the financial world, we all know that so when we hear about things like financial crisis is gone this should make people more optimistic and God, we need more optimism in our economy. All the money in the world are not gone, they just stopped circulating because people are afraid to spend them. I read some interesting facts about that on John Studzinski's articles.
perception is reality - reality is perception. The Nazi's knew 'the bigger the lie, the easier it is to get people to believe it. Nazi's are all gone, right? right?
Actually, Hitler and Schacht understood that a vital economy is based on real work and real wealth, not debt and speculation on debt. That's (one of the reasons) why the Anglosphere plutocrat-banksters and their stooges - Churchill and Roosevelt - arranged a World War.
it's about fucking time someone got made as hell!!!
Big Media is all about getting sheeple to SPEND...not save. The Eternal growth story is a one way street.
How does Legacy Media make their money? Advertising.
How do they charge their ridiculous rates for TV advertising? Forecasting customer spending and "showing" advertisers the potential of their viewing market.
So tying Legacy Media interests with the banking interest at the Fed, what do you get? Corporate fascism.
Corporate fascism trumps the Constitution...... The key variable is that the Fed can print (false) demand for as long as the Ponzi scheme lasts. China and Russia are climbing off of the Ponzi bus, the Fed prints more to buy up their sales....and it continues....until it doesn't.
Equities up...sheeple happy, Legacy Media maintains ad revenues, banks profit streams on ful throttle again.....buy, buy, buy.....until....
HI SmartKim you forgot GM and Citi no longer in current Dow index, but before the crisis, GM and Citi both are Dow components. So current Dow is not same as the Dow in crisis.
Speaking of fantasy financial reporting, the journalists are only the messengers. The Big 4 accounting firms validate ongoing fraudulent balance sheet presentations more than we investors will ever know ( Enron is well known).
Here are the Big 4 accounting bagmen spending record amounts to lobby Congress to maintain their incestuous relationships with S&P 500 clients.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/13/us-usa-accounting-big-idUSBRE82C0JQ20120313
AP no longer stands for Associated Press...it has stood for 'Administration Press' for the last three years and is part of the liberal propaganda machine. God forbid they would write an article which puts their hero i anything but the most favorable light. I find it particularly reavealing that the author of the article is not listed to take 'credit' for his or her work...
"If the news is broke, we fix it!"
Jounalists now major in marketing and theater, instead of history and economics.
That's one problem.
If you look at the Video (smartknowledge) of the formation of the current education system as devised by Carnegie and Rockerfeller interests, you will see that any mainstream education is virtually worthless. If you want the truth, you have to earn it by seeking it out.
In 2001, when we were wiped out by the NASDAQ crash, in order to make back our money, i first asked, what is money? This question sent me on a ten year journey of discovery. I found information that you would never find in a government sponsored education system. Start with the Creature From Jekyll Island.
In the end, everyone who writes is selling something - the big secret...
How about writing something that's simply free instead of motivated by the same greed that got us all here?
Usually I don't respond to such comments, but this time I will. In my defense, I've posted hundreds of articles on my blog for six years that I literally spent thousands of hours writing, giving hundreds of thousands of people information for free that many others have charged very significant money for every single year. Dozens of people write us every year that have never paid us a cent for our services, unsolicited, and thank us for the free information we have provided for six years on our blog. A few select people have even told us that they have used the information on our blog alone to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars of profit. If you want to equate the fact that I have to make a living with greed, and that I make a living helping clients in countries all over the world to the very best of my ability protect, preserve and grow their wealth, then that is your prerogative. I ensure that my firm gives back as much as I can to people that cannot afford my services (having given away more than USD $50,000 of my services for free since I launched my company six years ago). Furthermore, I have spent the last year writing two books of which my firm will donate every single penny of profits during the first year of sales to orphans and children with learning disabilites. Our overarching mission is to awaken as many people as possible to the principles of sound money that will make the world a better place in every way possible - reducing hunger, poverty, terrorism, problems of refugees, etc. This is, and always, has been our mission and we hope you will join us in our mission. Sound money = real money = a better world for everyone.
kapkhun krap .......mak! (pardon my spelling)
Good article.
I was outraged myself when I read the shrink article on Bloomberg the other day. Constant lies and manipulation.
That's why girls with big boobs deliver the news.
You heard about the law school grads from Harvard, Yale and Stanford that interviewed at the top law firm? All very top of their class, all female...one blonde, one brunette, and one redhead...guess who got the job??? The one with the biggest hooters.
I was under the impression that all news reporters were Hot? I wanted to take a journalism class just becuse of that idea, thanks for that reality check.
Seriously, there are no Investigative reporters or REAL news correspondents left. Caruso Cabrera is ugly so she finds herself in Greece with a teleprompter and an earpiece.
Once the banks are done foreclosing on every last property they will then start making home loans again. Of course they will tripple the value of the homes they now own overnight. Suddenly there will mysteriously be money in the economy again and interest rates will go up to 18% for your next home loan. Until one day in the future the music will stop and they'll foreclose on all the homes again. Rinse and repeat, but never throw the Bankers out of office. That would just be wrong...
http://thelibertyclub.net/emry.pdf
Razor sharp, John. *****
The Gov states that inflation is at 3.1% and outside group looking at consumers monthly expenditures says the inflation is at 8.1 percent. I've seen a 20% increase on prices for a lot of food items and clothing over the last couple of years. So I keep just enough money in a savings account to say that I have one for credit reasons, of course I've cut my use of credit to the bone so I don't really know if it is worth it anymore. I use a card for online purchases but keep it too amounts that I can pay off at the end of the month. I'm putting what little I can save these days into PM since my cash saving is going negaztive in the face of inflation and the almost non-existant interest paid on cash deposits. I just hope I don't get in a bind and start having to liquidate my PM early and end up like those poor guys in the line outside the cash for gold stores.
Once you realise that everything is built on the sands of human faith, you have to make choices based on your (necessarily) limited understanding of where we are at present. Will it all blow up tomorrow? Then sell everything, including your house, right now, and buy gold and silver with 90% of it and use the remaining cash to pay rent and to pick up Bentleys for pennies on the dollar. But if it blows up in three years, you will have had to liquidate a substantial portion (maybe even all) of your PM stash just to stay alive.
It's impossible to KNOW when it will all go bang. The chances of getting your mix of wealth-preservation choices perfect is pretty much nil. At this point, with a government that looks like it's going to become a full-blown police state within a few years, the very real possibility of monetary breakdown, and a world war triggered by attacking Iran, just be glad if you and your family can survive in (relative) comfort over the next decade.
I'm shocked, SHOCKED......
but do you start buying equities anyways? "it's no different from believing in your first (and hopefully only) wife." of course "there's never any dishonest in gold" so if that's all you love...that's all you love. just not me that's all...http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=DyEEOxDTCRM
We love other things at our firm besides gold and silver and have at times been heavily invested in agriculture and energy. However, we do believe in concentration in gold and silver versus diversification and buy & hold which we believe will be disastrous strategies going forward, just as it has been for the last 11 years. Despite the obvious and dishonest manipulation of bullion banks in suppressing gold and silver prices, gold has STILL risen 580% and silver has still risen more than 720% over the past 11 years. We'll take those gains over the -12% of the S&P 500 in the last 11 years any day, even with ALL the manipulation and all the dishonesty in gold and silver futures and spot markets! Navigate manipulation in any market and it can be highly profitable. We just believe it is far easier to navigate the manipulation in the gold/silver markets to earn profits than in the broad stock markets.
Dear Mr. Kim,
I want to thank you for this article from the bottom of my heart, much respect to you and god bless you for saying the truth......
you are one in a million.. and +5
Kind Regards,
Resurger
Awesome, as usual. You rock. What I want to know is how they can keep physical on the shelf? Since they are blatently manipulating and keeping prices down, isn't it just a matter of time before the shelves are literally going to be empty?
@resurger you're welcome :) @ engineertheeconomy, they trade millions of ounces of paper gold and paper silver that are never backed by physical to suppress prices but to be short and sweet, since they don't have the physical to back the paper trades they make in the futures markets, the COMEX will likely default at some point in the future when people REALLY start to buy physical gold and physical silver, as the strongest leg of the gold and silver bull is yet to come.
There are many including myself that believe they are using fear and brainwashing to steer people away from physical metals, but eventually world wide demand will turn the tide. Then look out because all hell will break loose in regards to spot prices, I can realistically see $2500 an ounce Gold in a year or so
why does anybody need to read /see mass media?
i dont watch cnbc/bloomberg/etc. .i dont read ft/wsj/barrons/etc
i get by just fine..
alx
how true. if only the rest of the world would agree with us.
The problem is that real journalists are nearly extinct. The headlines are written by government propaganda artists and passed on to the MSM, which gladly follows the scripts without question. Why do you think "competing" networks coincidentally use the same verbiage during live broadcasts? For example, during the Iowa caucus, you could flip though ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and Fox and hear them all use the term, "top-tier candidate," as if it was a standardized, industry term that had been in use for decades.
It's blatant propaganda.
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Compare gold and silver prices
The corporate owned media doesn't hire real journalists. Once I realized that very little they say makes me mad.
www.infowars.com