Merchants of Hype 0
At Asia Times, Ellen Brown comments on coverage of the phony phiscal cliff (emhasis added):
The cliff is really just a trumped-up annual budget discussion. … The most likely outcome is a combination of tax increases, spending cuts and kicking the can down the road.
Yet the media coverage has been “panic-inducing, falling somewhere between that given to an approaching hurricane and an alien invasion. In the summer of 2011, this sort of media hype succeeded in causing the Dow Jones Industrial Average to plunge nearly 2,000 points. But this time the market is generally ignoring the cliff, either confident a deal will be reached or not caring.
The goal of the exercise seems to be to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, something a radical group of conservatives has worked for decades to achieve.
It’s kabuki choreographed by Republicans to hide their radical goals under fantastickal costumes, a man-made crisis constructed to cause panicky concessions because panic!
