I'm not going to argue that the Dow Jones is irrelevant to the economy, but the fundamental problem of the bubble years was that the Dow Jones was growing and our actual assets were not. We weren't really getting richer. We were just pretending to get richer.
In mistaking themselves for the country at large, and the bouncing of the market for the health of the economy as a whole, Cramer, Kudlow and the whole talking-head crew give the lie to Rick Santelli's assertion about a "silent majority." CNBC feels like bizarro world because, in an important sense, it is.
”Pretending” pretty much describes the entire Bush years. Pretending there were WMDs in Iraq, pretending the economy was stronger than it really was, pretending the media was doing its job, pretending that if it’s good for the top 2% then it’s good for everyone else.
At a certain point, though, you can’t keep pretending. Time to put away the childish things and face reality.
Hooray for the pendejos:
