AP: If there is a new Great Depression, it’s YOUR FAULT.

(9AM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

Crossposted at Daily Kos

In a Sunday article, labeled Double Dippers could enable what they fear Tom Raum, writing for the Associated Press, proclaimed:

Their warnings could become self-fulfilling prophecies if they frighten enough people into holding tightly onto their wallets. With consumer spending accounting for two-thirds of economic activity, anything that further rattles consumers can undercut recovery hopes.

Mr. Raum offers not one shred of factual, statistical evidence that economists scaring people to hold onto their money would actually cause a Double Dip recession to occur.

As proof of his assertion, Mr. Raum offers nothing more than a lame quote and an opinion

Are double dippers becoming recovery party poopers?

“If consumers are hearing a lot of bad economic news and they’re already scared, they might pull back some more,” said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist for IHS Global Insight.

So, if we are to believe Mr. Raum, who offers quotes and vapors to justify a perspective put out as news by a major news organization, we are to believe that it’s those Evil Doomsaying Voodoo Economists scaring the witless public with their talk of Economic Catastrophe, Casting a Voodoo Spell over the Public, to Make them Afraid of Buying and Buying More and More Useless Stuff.  If such a catastrophe were to actually happen, in Mr. Raum’s world, it would be all the fault of those terrible terrible economists, with their Voodoo Graphs and Numbers, who refuse to Wear A Happy Face and tell everyone Don’t Worry Be Happy and Buy Buy Buy, who will be the cause of the Greatest Economic Disaster since the Great Depression.

Oh, if they would only Shut THE HELL UP!  Then everything would be fine.

I am forced to ask if Mr. Rahm has looked at a single chart, read a single blogger who, you know, actually looks at numbers and stuff, or even a well respected columnist who explains in grim, factual detail why American workers and families have every reason to be frightened out of their wits and save, rather than spend, their money.

What people like Raum say is, the jobs are never coming back, but the American worker can apparently lift himself up by his own bootstraps, just by spending more money.  Only those voodoo economists with their voodoo spells (facts) and stuff, just won’t keep the worker in the dark, and thus prevent a New Great Depression.  But it’s these economists, who look at numbers and graphs and trends, who are fantastical pony riders.  They are going to put a voodoo curse on the American Public, and Ruin it for Everyone.

However, more sinister than this, in my view, is the idea that Americans, while having every reason to be frightened out of their wits, they, and the economists who “frighten them” are to be BLAMED should an economic double dip occur.  Blamed for not spending.  Blamed for not CONSUMING.

Really?  Really, Mr. Raum?

It’s not like they’re actually frightened because they are one step from being homeless and stuff.  Perish the thought!

I had the sneaking suspicion I was being fed a fact free narrative designed to make once again the American worker look bad, selfish and lazy, while corporations and their cash hoarding, employee head chopping ways were being let off scott free, you know, in that responsible, fact free, happy face, McDonald’s way so characteristic of the “responsible” mainstream media.

So I did some digging.

It seems this is not the first time Tom Raum has appeared on someone’s radar, pushing a narrative that essentially states that any economic malaise, is really nobody’s fault, or perhaps the fault of the victims doing it to themselves, as opposed, to you know, those utterly rational economic actors, the corporations, who do what they do for rational reasons and of course cannot be therefore blamed for anything.

Last time it was about Social Security.  Of course, it’s no one’s fault if Social Security is privatized, cut down, or eliminated, because in the fact free world of the major responsible news media, like AP, it’s a “Ponzi Scheme”.

Then there was the time when unnnamed ghost “liberals” prevented Sarah Palin from becoming President by saying that her motherhood would get in the way.

Bloggers are irresponsible though, not AP.  Those facts, they can be very dangerous thing.  We should entrust these dangerous facts only into the hands of people who will use them “responsibly”.