CNN lies. CNN lies often. CNN lies routinely, as a matter of course. CNN lies without guilt, in a "higher" cause than truth. CNN lies for a perceived political advantage (CNN being "all in" for Obama). (Now, if you have read this blog very often, you know that this is my mantra for leftists--replace "CNN" with "leftist"--but few are doing more to prove me right than CNN (whose lpeople are leftists).
I was idly sufring through channels during the Dallas Cowboys football game (or before it started), and heard this amazing statement from the CNN "business expert", as CNN continued to trash the economy (I am more "expert" than this guy in my sleep):
"Middle class people have only three ways to get rich: slot machine jackpot, lottery, and the stock market. The stock market took a bath this week." (Not absolutely positive I am remembering "slot machine jackpot" right, and the third one may have been some other, but similar, item).
What can you say about a statement like that? That it contains more than one Orwellian Big Lie? That it is disgraceful? That it shows a total misunderstanding of the U.S. economy? That it shows a total misunderstanding of stock market investing? It certainly does all of these, and more. Along with Anderson's Cooper's statement that "the stock market has gone straight up in my lifetime", but worse, this statement is beyond shameful all of the way into hyper-evil (in which CNN specializes).
Let us start with the most basic and obvious lie. The stock market did not take a bath last week. This is not a matter of opinion. I is objective fact. The stock market averages were all basically unchanged for the week. The Dow (least representative stock market index) was very slightly down (34 points in an index over 11,000, which you can see is immaterial, and the Dow traded higher on Friday before the close). The broader S and P 500 Index and NASDAQ were up for the week. The stock market did not end the week at a low for the year, although it did touch a low for the year during the week. The statement by the CNN business "expert" was a blatant lie, and objectively so.
Now didn't the market "take a bath" early in the week. Yep. But so what. Read the statement again. The "middle class is not, and should not be, trading to get "rich" on a daily basis. As I have said repeatedly in this blog, stock market moves on a daily basis are meaningless. In the 1987 market crash the stock market lost more than it has ever lost, including the 1929 crash. It went down more on that day than the stock market was down at the worst point last week--by a lot. The stock market soon recovered, and that was probably the best buying opportunity of the last century. The worst buying opportunity since 19 was in the Clinton dot.com "bubble". The NASDAQ has barely recovered to half of the Clinton level, and the broader Standard and Poors 500 only barely recovered to the Clinton "dot.com bubble" level in the past year, as the Bush recovery from the Clinton dot.com recession and 9/11 proceeded. My use of "Clinton" and "Bush" is merely to gig people, as neither President was truly responsible. However, if Clinton were not responsible for the excesses, and "irrational exuberance" that ruined stock investors in the dot.com "bubble", neither was he responsible for the heights to which the stock market reached in the "bubble" (which burst before Clinton left office). The dot. com, tech hysteria was responsible for both the heights, and the depths (losses to real people) of the dot.com "bubble". I digress (not really).
The point is that this CNN stock market "expert" has "middle class" stock investing exactly wrong. Middle class people can get rich in the stock market, but not generally week by week. That is the more subtle lie in the above quoted statement. The way "middle class" people can get "rich" in the stock market is by regular, dollar averaging investment over time (like 20 to 50 years of time). If you invest in broad mutual funds over time, you can get rich. If you speculate on a daily basis in the stock market, you can also get rich, but at enormous risk (for example, on a daily basis you could have gotten rich last week by "shorting" stocks--betting they would go down--until late Wednesday, and then buying stocks--going "long"--on late Wednesday through late Friday. You can make money in the stock market if stocks go down. You just have to bet the right way. You have to assume that the CNN "expert" was not talking about short term speculation, and therefore he is lying by suggesting that the events last week should mean anything to "middle class" people expecting to get "rich" in the stock market.
Does one week, or even one year, mean anything to a person investing over a 20 year and longer period? Don't be silly. It does not, and should not (meaning that if you listen to the CNN "expert" you are making a horrible mistake--which you are making if you listen to CNN at all). You can even make a lot of money in a retirement account even if the stock market is at exactly the same level when you retire as when you started buying stocks. That is because you should be investing monthly or yearly, and so long as stocks have risen more consistently than they have fallen, even a deep spike down before you retire will not wipe out your gains. Plus, you should be diversifying in your retirement acount--especially as you get older or have major gains. That means shifting some of your gains out of stocks, and into government bonds--or something similarly safe--even a corporate bond fund--to make sure you hold your gains. As you get near retirement, and into retirement, of course, you may want to have a much diminished amount in stocks (cashing out during a rise in the market), since you cannot afford to wait out a stock market decline. Most retirement plans give you multiple options to manage your risk. The key thing is not to panic when October of 1987 happens, or September of 1998 (big market decline that panicked Jim Cramer), but to keep to your long term plan. Above all, do not listen to the gloom and doom people at CNN, or in the rest of the mainstream media. As the absolute best stock market experts have said, the key thing to making money in the stock market is to keep your head when everyone around you is losing his or hers. Usually, the best time to buy stocks is when there is "blood in the streets"--or on Wall Street (figuratively speaking).
Okay, I have established that CNN lied about last week, and lied (when looked at correctly) about the significance of last week on "middle class" investing. Is there anything else. Yep. You may not believe it, but CNN fundamentally lied about America. This is actually where McCain was right, when he suggested that a short term crisis has nothing to do with the fundamental soundness of the American economy and system. As McCain has also said, this does not mean that the exact details of the way the economic institutions of the moment are set up is sound. There are clearly some unsound aspects of the present system. But the overall American free enterprise system is still sound, and can survive these problems (if the mainstream media does not succeed in destroying the economy with unreasonable fear.
This brings me to the final (for now) CNN lie (all in that short, two sentence paragraph above). Those are not, in fact, the only ways (the three ways referred to by the CNN "expert") the only ways a "middle class" person can become "rich". It is a lie to suggest otherwise. Rush Limbaugh was "middle class". He is now obscenely "rick". Many of these CEO's making millions were once "middle class". Tom Edison was, I think, "middle class". There are all of those baseball, football, basketball, and even Olympic stars who were once poor or "middle class". Was Stephen King always rich? Dean Koontz? I don't know for sure, but I don't think so. How about the author of the Harry Potter books (British, but the principle is the same)? Then there is Bill Gates (again, I am not sure he was "middle class", but many like him were). The tech boom has created all kinds of young "rich" people.
For CNN to diminish the opportunities in the U.S. is disgraceful, but it shows you where the left is coming from these days. They are all about tearing down the U.S. economy, and the U.S. itself. They refuse to recognize our strenghts, and only see our problems. Despite the example of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill Gatesl--along with so many others--they try to suggest there is no "opportunity left in America. Even my brother has taken a shot at being "rick" (out of bankruptcy) by taking over (two years ago) a trucking company "with no money down" (yes, you can also get rick in real estate). My brother may not succeed, but he became, by ingenuity and hard work, half owner of a 200 truck trucking company. He has faced adversities, including the oil price spike, but came very close to becoming "rich" with that company. For awhile, he had a paper net worth of well over a million dollars,
Many other Americans have built a company like that (not necessarily in trucking, although I represented one youngish man who had done it in trucking). When I was a lawyer, I encountered any number of them. Before concentrating in personal injury, I used to have a general practice--including representing small businesses. You would be surprised the variety of ways people became "rich". One retired military man became "rich" (wroth millions) in the rag business (literally the "rag" business, although he sold some of the "rags" as used clothing into Mexico). There were export-import people. There was one who became rich in the security business. I can't tell you the number of small businesses I was aware of that sold out for millions of doallars--started by "middle class" or "lower" people. And I never had a very large corporate practice, and always in the relatively poor city of El Paso.
How DARE CNN say that "middle class" people don't have many ways to get "rich" in America. That is a denial of what Aermica has stood for, and still stands for: opportunity. I believe that CNN fails to recognize this because leftists like those at CNN (many of whom are middle class people who have become "rich" themselves) do not believe in private enterprise. They look at the government as the source of all prosperity, sort of like Christians (with more reason) look at God as the source of all goodness in the world.
What leftists like those at CNN want is to destroy the chance for people to become rich by taking ever more from people who make money--removing any incentive for people to take on the headache of starting a business, and working 80 hours a week to make it successful. Why not let the government take care of you.
Do you begin to understand why I have such contempt for the liars at CNN?
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