“It is significant that the nationalization of thought has proceeded everywhere pari passu with the nationalization of industry.” – EH Carr
Denying the Truth
Central planners embark on a daunting task. Their goal is to dictate how individuals should behave, often in ways that contradict personal freedoms. Only those with an inflated sense of self-importance would choose to navigate such a path.
Here are the mandates of the day: You must use public transportation. You must pay taxes. You must consume alternative proteins. You must use electric yard tools. You must own nothing and be content. You need a permit to sell lemonade. Do as I say, not as I do.
Yet, even when the masses comply, the outcomes set forth by central planners rarely align with their intentions. These plans are costly, create unnecessary jobs, and often lead to significant disruptions.
Despite recognizing their missteps, central planners persist, complicating matters with convoluted incentive programs, favoring one sector over another.
When their promises of prosperity fall short, what is their response? They fabricate narratives to obscure the truth.
Take Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, for example. Her vision is remarkable—she sees a way to sidestep a U.S. recession that seems invisible to most others.
Yellen’s optimistic outlook hinges on decreasing inflation and a robust labor market. She even elaborated on this during an ABC’s Good Morning America:
“You don’t have a recession when you have 500,000 jobs and the lowest unemployment rate in more than 50 years. What I see is a path in which inflation is declining significantly and the economy is remaining strong.”
According to the most recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report, the job market seems to be thriving, with an addition of 517,000 positions and an unemployment rate plummeting to a 53-year low of 3.4 percent.
Baseless Disinformation
What Yellen fails to acknowledge is that her projected path to dodge a recession is unfounded. First, the BLS data is misleading. When adjustments made by bureaucrats are stripped away, it unveils that the U.S. actually lost 2.5 million jobs in January.
The supposed gain of around 3 million positions, which resulted in a report of 517,000 new jobs, is largely fabricated. The truth is the economy is losing jobs at an alarming rate.
For instance, Dell Technologies is cutting 6,650 jobs due to a plummet in demand for personal computers. This reduction will shrink their global workforce by about 5%, marking a six-year low.
Additionally, Boeing and Zoom recently announced layoffs of 2,000 and 1,300 employees, respectively. Other major firms like Meta, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Opendoor, and Amazon have also experienced significant layoffs.
These positions are high-paying tech jobs, and replacing them with lower-wage roles in healthcare isn’t a recipe for economic growth. Government jobs, funded by debt, won’t bolster the economy, either.
According to tech job tracker layoffs.fyi, nearly 260,000 technology jobs have vanished since last year. In 2023 alone, over 98,100 tech employees have lost their jobs.
Clearly, the BLS report lacks substance. And regarding Yellen’s claims about inflation?
Next week’s consumer price index (CPI) report for January is expected to show a decline in inflation. But how does this align with the actual costs people face when purchasing groceries or paying utility bills?
The prices for essential goods are soaring, and the supposed bargains in stock prices hardly help – owning shares of GOOG may be 27% cheaper than last year, but you can’t eat stocks, nor do they offer dividends. Even if you could, that’s not particularly beneficial.
Through deceiving narratives, Yellen is denying the reality of the situation. Should we expect anything less?
Arrested Development
Remember, Yellen previously served as the Chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018, making her only the second individual in history to hold both positions of Fed Chair and Treasury Secretary, following G. William Miller during Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
Under Miller’s leadership, inflation soared. Yellen, like him, has had the chance to authorize spending based on credit she previously established, leading to equally detrimental outcomes for the dollar—perhaps even worse.
Before her tenure as Fed Chair, Yellen spent two decades at the Federal Reserve, albeit details of her contributions remain obscure. However, she was involved during an unprecedented period of Fed intervention.
Yellen has spent countless hours reviewing data, pondering how to manipulate figures to present a more favorable view. She even regards monetary policy as a moral dilemma.
Back in 1995, during a Federal Open Market Committee meeting, she advocated for allowing inflation to surpass its targets for ethical reasons. The late Robert Wenzel chronicled her argument in the Economic Policy Journal:
“Ms. Yellen told the committee that ‘the moral’ of all this is ‘that the Fed should pursue multiple goals.’ She said that ‘when the goals conflict and it comes to calling for tough trade-offs, to me, a wise and humane policy is occasionally to let inflation rise even when inflation is running above target.’”
We are now facing the consequences of the so-called wise and humane policies of central planners.
Living the Lie
In practical terms, inflation acts like an insidious tax on both savers and wage earners, eroding the purchasing power of their hard-earned income. Furthermore, it undermines the time and effort they invested to earn it.
Ask any retiree relying on a fixed income or a diligent worker striving to save for retirement—the inflationary policies being implemented are neither wise nor humane; they are misleading and harsh.
Every morning, Yellen likely gazes out at the economic landscape with a cup of coffee in hand. If she’s honest, what she sees is chaos. But with the machinery of propaganda at her disposal, she crafts narratives, rationalizations, and justifications that suggest everyone, including you, is living the dream.
With low unemployment rates, abundant job creation, and moderating inflation, there’s a supposed clear path to averting recession—at least, that’s what Yellen and the media want you to believe.
One troubling aspect of government propaganda is its tendency to obscure the truth. It attempts to persuade the public, through relentless repetition, to embrace an official narrative that anyone with a shred of curiosity can see is deceitful.
By denying the truth, these officials show a profound disrespect for it. Such disrespect opens the door to a plethora of moral dilemmas, blending the means with the ends. The world becomes something vastly different from what is presented.
As a result, the foundations of a free society diminish under layers of deception.
[Editor’s note: Do not be swayed by the narratives of central planners. The economy is faltering, and financial markets are in a precarious state. Learn how to use the Financial First Aid Kit to safeguard your wealth and capitalize as the global economy heads toward a depression.]
Sincerely,
MN Gordon
for Economic Prism
