Shark Food

The DOW and NASDAQ are not good barometers of the overall health of the economy. They actually measure pools of capital that are absent from the real economy, involved in speculation rather than moving the gears of supply and demand.

The reasons why the DJIA and NASD are placed front and center of every mass media business report released for the consumption of laymen are obvious:

They can be and are manipulated, so they can be used to put a happy face on an economy with systemic rot ( or, like last year, they can be used to panic people into handing trillions over to the banks when they plunge )..

They entice people into the markets. Look how much money the brokerage industry spends on ads- the focus on the averages is like free advertising for them, because they sell the tickets to get into the action. When every business report dwells on their isolated world of speculative frenzy, the general public is conditioned to want in. It looks exciting to them. It makes them feel like losers if they stay on the sidelines. That lures in new money, which the sharks love.