Hightower Lowdown

The Associated Press
reported on June 2 that
Wall Street was ecstatically
bullish about three news
items: 1. More Americans
were unemployed in May
than in April; 2. Wage
growth for U.S. workers
was non-existent; and 3.
Orders for products from
U.S. factories dropped by
the biggest percentage in a
decade.
Never mind that this is
all bad news for the
majority of people living in
this country. The media
establishment covers our
economy from the topsyturvy
perspective of Wall
Street, where bad is good
and common sense is
uncommon indeed.
Speculative stock prices
have now replaced takehome
pay as the official
measure of our nation’s
economic health.
The W all Street
Journal enthused, that “a
million Americans who had
jobs at the beginning of the
month found themselves
unemployed by the end of
it.” Oh, happy day! With a
million more people scrambling
for jobs, you see, corporate
executives don’t
have to raise wages, which
means investors can pocket
more profit, and exuberant
Wall Street speculators
can bid up the price of corporate
stocks.