I especially liked the mock headline "Wet Streets Cause Rain" to illustrate how the media can distort the news.

but for 2 million dollars, you could buy a pretty good life annuity that would pay you much more per year until you croaked. that's essentially how many defined benefit plans actually work. They're annuities, as is social security.

since the talk is about public debt - you might find this interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holders_of_the_National_Debt_of_the_United_States.gif

it basically shows who the govt currently owes - public and self. All the "self" are Trust Funds.

Man, you don't know how right you are.

My thinking on that had changed some years ago after I had personally witnessed an event and seen it expressed on TV that night in a way completely different than what I know I saw.

It was completely accidental. I was not part of it, nor did I know what was going on until I heard the news report. Then once I understood, I had a "that's not right! Why are they saying that?" moment.

Until then, like everyone else, I was "too busy to notice", even though I had my suspicions and could point to examples of "bias" from a so called "objective" media. But, when it goes beyond bias into doing the spinning itself (leaving a false impression), then its like a chapter out of 1984. It is rather unsettling.

All I can say is know or try to take an educated guess from what you see as to the motivation from the people/organizations providing you the information. Know that every source is biased anyway, but are they distorting the truth as well vs just providing a point of view? Make your own decision to accept or not. Don't just look for confirmation bias, but consider various view points from sources you can "trust".

We are living in some challenging times with much of the media hardly asking the tough questions that need to be asked, made worse by some who ARE participants.

The state is officially your enemy.

In the name of “safety,” of course.

So not only are they suppressing rate of return, they may seize your retirement funds outright.

They will also dip into your bank accounts and remove funds at will, as they do currently in Italy (and other backward countries).

Outcome: violence.

This rationale played out in Argentina where people found their (already devalued) savings turned into government bonds.

In a seemingly unrelated news story, I heard today that "Wall Street" bonuses will be up 8% this year on average.

Part of the Fed strategy is the hope that a buoyant stock market would create a "wealth effect" and thereby boost the economy (consumer/business confidence to spend/invest), while keeping rates low for the federal government debt (a 1% increase in rates on a $16T debt would have interest expense rival welfare expenditures, a 3% increase would have it rival pension or healthcare expenditures).

So, we are left with the fact that they are deliberately attempting (successfully) to distort the market pricing mechanism for debt and equity. As Bernanke alluded to in Jackson Hole, we are in "experimental territory".

Not sure how it will work out, but we hear lots of cheering from much of the popular media. Too bad these smart folks didn't let us know of the pending crisis back in 2008.