The Mirage of Economic Recovery

The post The Mirage of Economic Recovery appeared first on WhoWhatWhy.

This is the third of a multi-part WhoWhatWhy election autopsy. Please go here for the first and second parts.

The media has consistently under-reported the damage done to our economy as a consequence of the 2008 financial meltdown.

According to CNN, Americans lost some $16.4 trillion in household wealth as a consequence of Wall Street’s machinations.

Something that massive can’t help but have generational consequences. Yet, in an age when a news entity’s priority is driven by how many clicks it receives, we instead get the listicles of celebrity weight gain or stupid pet tricks.

Who wants a hard-luck story, especially when the whole news enterprise is paid for by stimulating insatiable materialism? As a consequence, all too often the news media is more interested in profiting off the masses than informing them.

For a few years now, I have been reporting on a parallel America where things did not get better. These stories for WhoWhatWhy, Salon, CBS MoneyWatch, WBGO, and NPR form a timeline that documents a phenomenon that was largely being ignored.

The corporate news media’s propaganda has had real consequences. Just as Hillary supporters were lulled into complacency by the media’s uninformed reporting, President Barack Obama could sit back because he was lauded for saving an economy that was actually continuing to deteriorate for tens of millions of families.

Late last year, in places like Ohio and Wisconsin, there were signs that things on the farm were slowing down, as China’s troubles and a drop in commodity prices threatened to turn America’s farm boom into a bust.

Read more http://whowhatwhy.org/2016/11/23/mirage-economic-recovery/