It is the unfortunate fact that MOPE is now the core driver of pubic policy.
Sinclair addresses it as Management of Perspective Economics, others as Management of Perceptions Economics... but, both of those are fairly polite and deliberately overly technical modifications of what the policy really is... which is "management of performance expectations". Of course, if you call it "management of performance expectations" everyone will know exactly what that means, and what you are talking about doing... and it isn't very flattering to have others recognize that policy is based in nothing other than deliberately lying to people to alter their behavior... to make them behave the way you want them to... by making them believe things that aren't true.
Here's a Sinclair column noting the application in relation to inflating the reporting of GDP:
silverdoctors.com
MOPE is why there is no inflation, when there is. MOPE is why the jobs outlook is so rosy when in fact unemployment is as bad as it has been in a century. Tell everyone we're expecting big increases in retail holiday sales... report big numbers, and then correct the numbers downward after the fact. MOPE is why government statistics on the economy are frequently being revised massively, after the fact, in such large increments that they are vastly greater than any reasonable margin of error that could exist in the initial data.
And, of course, MOPE is also the reason why the trade in gold often seems to be wildly disconnected from market reality... i.e., manipulated... because... well... it is.
When they tore down the glass wall in Glass Steagal, and let the liars, cheats and thieves from the trading floor come in and run the banks... you should have known that putting the crooks in charge of the banks would mean problems with banks practicing frauds... as occurred in the housing market, with fraudulent loans packaged up as AAA gold, as certified by the ratings agencies, and resold to unsuspecting patsies... which investments the bankers who had put the deals together actively bet against, knowing they'd fail. The financial instability that resulted... came from imposing the sudden awareness on bankers than bankers just can't be trusted... but, rather than fix that problem, by putting the crooks in jail, we've instead promoted the practitioners of the worst of it... so that they now make national economic policy. MOPE is the result... a policy that is purposefully based in the expectation that lies can be sustained long enough to be made true enough, if only the government backs the lies... |
