Fed Press Conference: A New Way To Lie

When I heard the news that the Federal Reserve was going to have a press conference, I was amused. When I heard the accompanying rhetoric that the purpose of the press conference was to make the Federal Reserve “more transparent” to markets, I found that hysterical.

As anyone who knows anything about the Federal Reserve knows, the Fed is the antithesis of “transparency”. The same institution which is about to have its first press conference in its near-one hundred year existence has never been audited. Indeed, the Federal Reserve has not only fought any suggestion of an audit tooth-and-nail, but it fought (all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court) to prevent anyone from learning anything about the $trillions in banker-welfare it has dispensed since 2008.

Given that this press conference has nothing to do with “transparency” (or telling the truth), the obvious question is: what is the purpose of this press conference? The answer is that the Fed needed a new way to lie. For the past five years, the Fed has managed/manipulated media and markets with the most simplistic slogans it could imagine – simple enough so that the mediocre media parrots could be counted upon to brainwash the masses with it.

Indeed, “simple” is an understatement. For five years the Fed's “message” has been nothing more than a two-word phrase. First it was “Goldilocks economy”. Then it was “soft landing”. Then it was “green shoots”. Then it was “quantitative easing”. Then it was “exit strategy” – with the Fed's “exit” immediately followed by more quantitative easing.

In short, these buzzwords have been nothing but rhetorical nonsense, and yet the stooges in the media continue to parrot Fed rhetoric with pathological devotion. Even after five years of been an accessory to these lies, they not only show not the tiniest iota of contrition, but they continue to slavishly soak-up and repeat Bernanke's endless lies.

It's possible that today's press conference is nothing more than a “roll-out” of the Fed's newest buzz-words for the media parrots to memorize. One candidate for this new propaganda is “new normal”. Having heard the media parrots on Canada's business news network spouting this phrase several times in recent days, it could be an indication that a new “script” has been dispensed to the media.

What does “new normal” mean? In the simplest of terms it means lowering expectations and accepting failure. Inflation is high? It's the “new normal”. Unemployment high? “New normal.” Wages low? “New normal.” In the minds of Fed-heads it is a perfect slogan in that it means nothing and excuses everything.

However, a Bloomberg piece released this morning suggests perhaps an even more evil agenda for this press conference: the possible (public) resurrection of the most-evil of all elitist dogma: “fighting inflation with high unemployment”.