When I was a kid, there was a TV game show called "To Tell the Truth". The show featured a row of contestants sitting across from a row of three people, one of whom was the "real" person and the other two being imposters. The contestants had to ask yes-or-no questions of the three and whoever figured out who the "real" person was won the show.
It seems that the information we are receiving from the government (economic reports), the news media, politicians, and the financial markets, are nothing more than a highly sophisticated version of 典o Tell the Truth". The only difference of course is the original version was only a game. The new version is reality, and deals with the investment futures of millions of investors.
We are all aware of the inflation problems facing our nation, but no one in the government or Wall Street are leveling with the American people. When you are dealing with mis-information from the press, Wall Street, and questionable economic reports, what are investors to do?
Take for example of the recent rumors that the White House was paying off a columnist to write a favorable column about a sensitive issue. I'm sure this is has taken place in other administrations as well, but my goodness, what a sleezy way to do business.
Attempting and succeeding in misleading the public is taking place all over the country. My wife recently went with a friend to her husband痴 new dental office. The new sign outside of his office said "family and cosmetic dentistry". Inside the waiting room were pictures of restorative dental work. As my wife looked at the pictures she said boy these teeth look great, your husband did this? The dentist痴 wife said no, we bought those pictures. Uh, you've got to be kidding!
Last week, GM's CEO, Richard Wagoner tried put a positive spin on the company痴 progress of cutting its workforce, and turnaround prospects. Unless GM can make vehicles with the same quality as Toyota, that save consumers money at the pump, and shed their huge legacy costs, the company will continue to lose market share to foreign manufacturers. It痴 that simple. Come on Richard, tell the truth. You're just delaying what everybody already knows.
In this weeks "Up & Down Wall Street " column in Barron's, Randall Forsyth said that "GM's outside PR firm offered former Democratic Labor Secretary Robert Reich a payment if he would gave GM's plan (to cut employees-cost cutting) a thumbs up in his many media appearances." By the way, Reich turned them down.
Reich said, 的f corporations can offer bribes, we no longer will have a free press. We no longer have experts we can trust. And the opinions you read and hear every day are worth absolutely zilch."
As much as I hate to admit this, we are probably already at this point. Until the inflation numbers begin reflecting what is really happening in the economy, the opinions we are getting are worth 殿bsolutely zilch."
