With that headline the author and/or his editors obviously need our Introduction to Search Engine Optimization/How to Write Clickbait That Works tutorials. Some examples from our graduates:
- How Does the Language of Headlines Work? You Won't Believe The Answer
- Before Buying into the Idea that Fractional Reserve Banking has Some Sort of Fraudulent Roots, Listen To This Battlecry From A Supermodel
- Bloomberg: Goldman Sachs, Sex, Viagra, Tiger Woods, and Barack Obama *
Moving right along, from The Philosphical Salon, February 6:
What are the drivers of senile capitalism? I will list five of them in no particular order, and then proceed to discuss their interconnections:
- Debt. The only road into the capitalist future continues to be signposted by liquidity creation programmes. Creating cash “out of nothing”, and setting it in motion as credit, is the elementary monetary strategy that keeps our societies from staring into the abyss – like the cartoon character who, having run off the edge of a cliff, floats in mid-air before acknowledging gravity. However, the pull of gravity is now irresistible, and the descent has begun with a violent bout of currency devaluation.
- Bubbles. Financial bubbles, inflated by cheap credit feeding a delusional mechanism of perpetual motion, are the only meaningful measure of wealth-production left. Nothing but keeping the bubbles from popping matters to the minions of the “beautiful machine”. While the financialised economy balloons away from its social bond, human existence turns into collateral for the speculative algorithm.
- Controlled demolition. Wage dumping and downward competition for fewer and fewer jobs is the necessary other side of the bubble paradigm. For the speculative markets to persist, the “work society” must be gradually downsized, since today’s artificially inflated financial assets and real demand are mutually exclusive. Simply put: Main Street is a liability for Wall Street, which is why consumer capitalism is now morphing into the management of collective immiseration.
- Emergencies. Our existential condition during the terminal phase of bubble-to-bubble capitalism is an intrinsically terroristic meta-emergency ideology, a permacrisis that must accompany us from cradle to grave. In this respect, the pseudo-pandemic of 2020 was only the icebreaker. Let us not delude ourselves: a world that is set on defending so fanatically its own implosion has many more shockers in store for us.
- Manipulation. Media propaganda in the age of digital hyper-connectivity comes naturally, so it is only natural that senile capitalism, sensing its collapse, makes the most of it. A stubborn confluence of blind stupidity and cynical calculation is at work here. As George Orwell predicted well before the internet, it comes down to telling lies while believing them: ‘The process [of mass-media deception] has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.’[i] Jean Baudrillard called the result of this process ‘hyper-reality’.
Capital’s perpetual-motion machine....
....MUCH MORE
*Our advanced course covers Strange Bloomberg Headlines.
A lot of these are via the Strange Bloomberg Headlines Tumblr so here's the HT up front.
Draghi Takes ECB to Land of Gomorrah as Naples Prays
Sex in Geriatrics Sets Hebrew Home Apart in Elderly Care
How come all of these articles about sex among the elderly have suddenly started appearing in a news service owned by a 71-year-old guy on the brink of retirement?
Oh.
- France Ranks Companies in Carrot-Baguette Gender-Equality Push
- Met’s Hot Dog Cart Infestation Calls for Assyrians
- Public Vasectomy With Band-Aid Promotes Family Planning
- Special K for Depression Renews Hope in Hallucinogens
- Kill Your Wife While Sleepwalking or Get Goldman Touch
- Hollande Heeds Napoleon Hiring Bank of America Critic
- Canadian Economy Suffers From Dollar Parity's One-Eyed King in Land of Blind
- UBS Sees Banker Grounds Riff Like Keith Richards Winning Asia Equity Deals
- Silent Scream of Swiss Franc Shows Great Distortion Amid Great Moderation
- S&P 500 at 2,000 a Reminder That Humans Are Mere Mortals
Whereas back at 1500 we were as gods …
We're not the only ones who have noticed:
Alphaville Looks at Strange Bloomberg Headlines
Surprisingly though, despite their former association with Pearson, the FTers have not yet opened an education division.
We on the other hand will referring back to the The Philosophical Salon with quizzes and perhaps a test or two.
