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Welcome to USAGOLD's "Gilded Opinion" pages. We invite you to browse our index of outstanding gold-based commentary.
The Media, Bull Markets & the Gold
Price
by Professor von Braun
November 11th, 2000
What interesting times we live in. Gold languishes, stocks decline, a new President can't be decided upon and today's World Heavyweight boxing championship does not include an American boxer. Have the mighty fallen, or is this just a sign of things to come?
The role of the media in the pre-announcements as to who won the election is of course mind-boggling. The media should have been reporting results that were concrete, instead of becoming vote counters and advising the entire planet who had won when the results were not in.
But ever since the Gulf war and CNN's presentation of it, the media has had an ever increasing influence on cultivating the direction public opinion will go. This, coupled with ever increasing ratings and associated advertising revenue has served to distort reality. CNBC with its increased revenue from the promotion of stocks over stepped the mark in 1997 and has been presenting extremely biased reports ever since, with the aim of keeping ratings and revenue going up. The fact that the subject matter, the US economy and associated stock markets, have been in trouble for some time seems to have escaped them. Their supply of "experts" seems endless and Wall Street, a major source of income, is only too happy to find some more, especially when the stock markets are down. But as to the actual value of these "experts", well goodness gracious me!
How many times have we heard the "experts" say the bottom is now in and it's a great time to be "buying". Buying what one must ask? Priceline.com, Amazon, Microsoft, Hewitt & Packard, Dell, Cisco? Why do they bother?
The media in the US is about as biased as one can possibly get, indeed one could say that even the Peking Daily could take lessons. Regardless of the long-term outcome, they (the self-glorifying casino touts of the day) are chasing after short term revenues, a strategy that HAS to become self defeating at some stage. Eventually the hype will proved to be wrong and a backlash will appear. Tough!
Are they presenting the news, or are they presenting what they believe will help them in the quest for the media version of the Holy Grail? Top ratings and record revenues. Me thinks it is the latter. Tuesday night's debacle was not other than an example of that.
However it does take a gullible public to allow this to happen, so the media may not be entirely to blame. Everybody wants to be rich, do well, be content and one needs confirmation that this is so, which of course comes from the media, with a balance of others misfortunes thrown in of course.
But this time they went too far with the obvious over zealous reporting and misled the American public while some voting polls were still open. They declared a result! It is unbelievable that such arrogance could exist. "We are the most popular news program so we must be right." OK. Certainly they have had some good examples to follow when it comes to arrogance over the last few years. One does not get the nick-name "Slick Willie" by being slow.
Accurate reporting, especially when it comes to financial markets, has been lacking for some time. This we know. What we don't know (yet) is the extent of encouraged media manipulation when it comes to the markets. We know that the ratings game won't work if markets go down. So what is the strategy these people have?
Have they convinced themselves that their reporting brings about the desired result, rather than report news after it happens? Does bad news get reported? Does the reality of financial markets mean anything? Apparently not! The name of the game is to keep promoting stocks at all costs, while failing to provide these "individual investors" with any alternative. So far, at least until recent times, they have been right.
The complete lack of even halfway decent reporting on the gold market is evidence of this, as is a complete lack of understanding of cycles, market repetition, commodity markets, life, money and any thing other than stocks. These "yobbos", the same ones who decided the US Presidential election, are providing the "individual investor" with the apparent ratings-preferred direction of the stock market.
Contrary to popular opinion the United States is not the center of the universe, nor is the US $ the only currency on the planet. Nor has the US financial markets, under the apparent leadership of Federal Reserve chairman Al Greenspan, become the owner of the Holy Grail. He, by his own admittance, does not actually know what money IS. Do the "individual investors" know? Is Greenspan talking to them? I DON'T THINK SO!
The smart thing to do now is buy gold, if for no other reason than, as the financial media -- the ones who believe they are advising the mythical "individual investors" -- completely missed the rapid rise in oil prices, preferring instead to receive income from advertisements that sold gas guzzling "SUV's", it is most likely that the coming rally in gold will be missed by all of them. That's ALL OF THEM including of course, the "individual investors", the ones who are heading for the financial equivalent of the meat works. GOOD LUCK!
The Prof can be contacted by email at profvonb2@aol.com
Copyright by Professor von Braun. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted at USAGOLD by permission.
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