MSM cheers fictional economic recovery while 20% of American families don't work at all; home ownership at 25-year low

(NaturalNews) The mainstream media continues to do its best to try to convince us that we are in the midst of an economic recovery while the rest of us are asking the question: just who is benefiting? Certainly not the average American family, according to the statistics I keep seeing.

Perhaps, like Homer Simpson theorizes, I'm just living in "Opposite Land" - a place where hot snow falls up and economic recoveries look like collapses. I could almost believe that if it weren't for the others who know more about economics than I ever will and who share the same bleak outlook.

A fine example of how the media manages to paint a rosy picture while ignoring data that would suggest the opposite is found in the recent article posted on Bloomberg.com titled "This New Indicator Shows There's No Bubble Forming in U.S. Housing."

One of the quotes from the article:

The vast majority of American homeowners have little to fear: A new gauge from Nationwide Insurance in Columbus, Ohio, suggests the national market is in its best shape since 2001 and there's no reason to fear a national downturn, no less a bursting bubble.

That sounds very nice in theory, but it's part of a smokescreen generated by the media designed to convince us that the housing market is healthy. The "indicators" the article bases its predictions on are spurious at best, but it's not fooling everyone - especially not the folks at Investment Research Dynamics, who posted a scathing rebuttal to all the B.S. the Bloomberg article attempted to feed the public.

A couple of quotes from the I.R.D. article:

The "indicator" is Nationwide Insurance's "Leading Index of Healthy Housing Markets" report, which it unveiled at the end of March. Bloomberg's news report was little more than marketing propaganda for the housing market. It was clear that Bloomberg did not research the validity of Nationwide's new housing market "indicator."...

and:

To be blunt, based on the information about the index provided by Nationwide, its housing index has to be one of the most preposterous economic indicators outside of the employment and GDP reports.

As the I.R.D. article reveals, the "indicator" used in the Bloomberg article was basically a fraud invented by Nationwide, a company that just happens to have an obvious ulterior motive:

As it turns out, Nationwide also owns a bank which offers mortgages, home equity loans and home equity lines of credit. This goofy housing market health report is a marketing tool for its mortgage business.

The I.R.D. post also points out the fact that in one sense, Bloomberg is right: the housing bubble is not on the verge of bursting. It already burst in 2005-2006 and "was never allowed to fully deflate." Instead, the Fed began printing trillions of dollars that contributed to the "dead cat" bounces in the market that we have been seeing ever since.

Meanwhile, other mainstream news sources are giving us their own twisted version of the truth. CNBC.com, for example, is trumpeting a "Housing recovery in full swing" while admitting the home ownership rate is at a 25-year low and that "Lower- and even middle-class Americans are...less and less able to become homeowners."

They're calling that a "recovery"?

Let's not forget the fact that as of 2014, no one has a job in 20 percent of American households. That's right: one in five American families have no breadwinners and food stamp enrollment is still on the rise.

Yet we are somehow supposed to believe the nation is experiencing an economic upswing? I think even Homer Simpson would be smart enough to see through that one...

Sources:
http://investmentresearchdynamics.com
http://www.bloomberg.com
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102627205
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/1-5-families-us-no-one-works
http://abcnews.go.com