Smoke and mirrors are used to make us believe the U.S. economy is authentic, robust and sound, all of which is an elaborate illusion.

Out of one side of the establishment’s mouth we hear excitement about “green shoots,” and out of the other side comes breathless warnings of fiscal cliffs and the urgent need for unlimited bailouts  by the Fed in the form of ongoing “quantitative easing,” which consists of the Federal Reserve Bank creating $85 billion a month out of thin air, and using it to buy two things:   1) huge amounts of government bonds from the US Treasury Department, and 2) huge amounts of near-worthless mortgage-backed securities from private banks (i.e. banksters). What this amounts to is a kind of ongoing bailout and gift, which, at its core, is an ongoing transfer of wealth to rich banksters and other Wall Streeters, from the rest of us.

We hear about ever more people begging for jobs and the politicians promising them. But short of another WPA/CCC program, or massive funding for a national infrastructure bank (neither of which House Republicans would ever permit), politicians can’t (except by way of the military-industrial complex) create jobs in any significant number, despite the 32 million souls who are either unemployed or underemployed.

Meanwhile, we see people camped out to buy stuff on Black Friday, indicating that the consumer economy is thriving — only to find out that practically everything is being bought on credit .

The corporate media does their best to distract us from seeing very much that’s real or truly important. We see it glorify Kim Kardashian who recently got front page coverage on Huffington Post because her cat died. Meanwhile the financial media makes the economy seem complicated, and they ban from their airwaves anyone who might speak truthfully and simply about it. Financial media pundits and commentators speak a kind of special language known almost exclusively by MBAs.

The full article originally appeared at OpEdNews. 

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