Kindergarten News

When I was a kid, the BBC broadcasted a gripping TV mini series called “Escape from Colditz”, adapted from the books written by Major Pat Reid about his wartime years in Colditz castle, a high security German prisoner-of-war (POW) camp.

One memorable anecdote related to the daily propaganda broadcast, the sondermeldung, which was blasted loudly from speakers all around the castle. Amongst other things, it boasted of the Allied ships sunk by the glorious German Navy and Luftwaffe. The POWs paid rapt attention to these daily bulletins, and kept a meticulous tally of the number and class of the Allied ships reported as sunk, until one day, they sought an audience with the camp Kommandant to explain their joy that the war would soon be over. When asked why, they explained that, according to official German news sources, every single serviceable Allied warship had been destroyed, so the surrender would clearly be announced very soon. Naturally, this news was also spread to all the camp guards. From that day on, as the surrender failed to appear, and the relentless daily bulletins continued to boast of the further destruction of shipping, the effect of the German propaganda on their own people was to depress and demoralize them, as they realised it was all lies designed to fill them with false comfort.

I have come to the same view about much of the news I hear on mainstream channels. While alternative news sources are less comforting because they avoid the mainstream “happy talk” clichés of “fragile recovery”, “cautious optimism”, “turning the corner” and “green shoots of recovery”, they provide real information which helps to explain the full, gruesome nature of the problems which face us all: the total magnitude of debt, who is indebted to whom, how likely these debts are to be settled, how the value of assets (such as property) put up as collateral for debt has fallen and what the big boys are doing to cover their positions at the expense of the little people.

Most of these big stories usually appear in mainstream media in a dumbed-down form once the dust has settled. Too late, they tell us what has already been long-settled and they must be seen as lagging indicators. What most of us yearn for, as the financial storm clouds gather, are leading indicators: reliable, advance warnings of impending trouble, in a form we can understand and in time for us to take action to protect our own interests.

I've always found these sites to be full of fresh insight, breaking news and above all, an ability to see clearly beyond the web of financial mis-information spun by the mainstream media:

• Zero Hedge 
• The Market Oracle 
• The Golden Jackass
• Jesse's Café Américain 
• FinancialSense.com 
• Financial Armageddon 
• RT – Latest News 
• FOFOA 
• Another (Thoughts!): The Profound Story of Gold and Oil 
• ECONOMICROT 
• Seeking Alpha
• The Automatic Earth 
• 24hGold - Revue de Presse 
• Financial Sense 
• The Cobden Centre