Ya Gotta Keep Up

      If you wanna know what's going on ya gotta keep up. Here's some language stuff you might want to know.


Communist 1950's through 80's
Replaced by Socialist 80's through early to mid 90's
Liberal 90's to about 2008 or so
and today Progressive


Any time some group wants to change it's image it first changes it's label.


OK, now for our language lesson.


Definition:

rhet·o·ric

   [ret-er-ik]  Show IPA

noun

1.

(in writing or speech) the undue use of exaggeration ordisplay; bombast.

2.

the art or science of all specialized literary uses oflanguage in prose or verse, including the figures of speech.

3.

the study of the effective use of language.

4.

the ability to use language effectively.

5.

the art of prose in general as opposed to verse

OK, so now lets move on to the use of rhetoric:

If I want to obfuscate a topic, I will use a word like obfuscate.  If I really want you to understand me, I might use a longer phrase like "muddy the water" or a more common word like "confuse the ...."  See?

So let's take a phrase like "monetary easing".  monetary easing

Action by a central bank to reduce interest rates and boost money supply as a means to stimulate economic activity.

So a central bank (like the Federal Reserve, or the European Central Bank) lowers cost of getting money and at the same time prints more money, also making it easier to get (presumably).

And how does all this work?  Well, like this.  Money has no real value, only a perceived value.  Now it's all ranked, i.e. 1,2,5,10,20,50,100, etc.  But it has no value except the #'s on the bills help you keep track of how much of it you have.

Let me further illustrate.  Our Federal Reserve used (repeat) used, to keep track of all the money that was floating around out there.  It was call M1.  That was a short hand term which meant "... all the money that was floating around out there."

Then the FR (Federal Reserve) decided that it was better NOT to print that little bit of data.  Why?  Well there are probably a lot of reasons, but one of them is that it's easy arithmetic.  If today the M1 # is 100 and tonight the FR prints some money (monetary easing) so that tomorrow M1 is 125 just about anybody can figure out that the value of their dollar just was reduced by 25% or in this case 25 cents.

Hummm?  Sounds too simple Jack, there must be more to it than this?

Well, let's see.  So you don't want me to just print more money and toss it out in the world, how about this.  I'll print more money, NOT put it into circulation, but issue some US Treasury bonds for somebody to buy (say the social security system, they are a good customer, or maybe the citizens they like bonds, or even China or Saudia Arabia).  Since THEY bought the bonds with their money, then I can convert THEIR MONEY into some new dollars and it's all not so obvious.

But the effect is my 100 became 75 or MY dollar was worth 25 cents less than yesterday and was devalued by that much.

Maybe that's enough of that for now.  It's the kind of topic I return to often.

Next word:

pro·pa·gan·da

 noun \ˌprä-pə-ˈgan-də, ˌprō-\

Definition of PROPAGANDA

1

capitalized : a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions

2

: the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person

3

: ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect

# One is definitely not what I had in mind either #'s 2 or 3 get the idea of where I wanted us to go.

Propaganda says nothing about Lies. Mixing numbers and percent is not lying, it is obfuscating, or misleading the mind and memory.

Quantitative easing is not lying. It's obfuscating.

Collateralized debt obligations is not lying it is obfuscating.

There is much more to know.

So keeping up with vocabulary and being alert is a major part of informing yourself about what is really going on.

And this isn't a rant.  This in information to help you write letters to people who do this sort of thing and tell them to stop.  Let them you know how you feel about them making it so difficult for us to get the information we need to make good decisions.