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A Very FAKE Inflation Report Circulated on Social Media-It Caused Very REAL Stock Market Damages [1]

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Date: 2022-07-15

While I have distrust, and some obvious disdain towards the fealty of our goverment to the markets, the fact is many working class Americans depend on it for their retirements.

While this needs to be addressed, so that retirees are afforded stable, prosperous golden years for their hard work, we all know the markets affect more than Jeff Bezos’s ability to buy an extra yacht.

On Tuesday, the day before the actual real Consumer Price Index report was to be released by the BLS, a fake report showing inflation over 10 percent year-over-year was “released” and circulated widely on social media.

x Markets so nervous about inflation, the fake “leaked CPI” report drove a major late day market selloff



- reminder inflation top of mind for investors



- June CPI due at 8:30am ET today https://t.co/oZkGelyXwo — Thomas (Tom) Lee (not the drummer) FSInsight (@fundstrat) July 13, 2022

x 1/7. A fake June inflation report sparked fears of a further acceleration of liquidity contraction in risk asset markets, which pushed prices of stocks and cryptos down, while RBNZ's attitude about rate hikes meant some central banks had to start thinking about recession risks. pic.twitter.com/htDg6adPIu — Blofin (@Blofin_Official) July 13, 2022

We have seen the incalculable damages unregulated social media has allowed to this country and planet to endure. Basically, there are way too many people, in this nation particularly, who think they know things, or have expertise on things they don’t. They can’t recognize fake from real, post the fake, and then it gets sent out widely to the point that this happens:

Stocks slumped to session lows around the time the fake release started making the rounds on social media. The release that circulated online Tuesday attempted to mimic the formatting of the prior month’s CPI report but with different dates and numbers. It included several indications that it was a forgery, including a chart whose numbers failed to match the text.

This could have been done by anybody. It could have been a prank, or a bored teen. Or it could have been a malevolent entity with far more sophisticated and nefarious goals. For obvious reasons, I will not post the phony one, but let’s take a look at what happens as the market dives.

The world’s largest technology companies have shed over $1 trillion in value in just three trading sessions. Markets first moved up on Powell’s comments, but the optimism sputtered out in the following days. Stocks went lower on Thursday, fell again on Friday and then still lower on Monday. The S&P 500 U.S. stock index fell below the 4,000 mark on Monday, having declined by 7% since Wednesday’s close, while the Invesco Nasdaq 100 ETF is off by nearly 10% during the same period.

Here is a look at how the stocks tumbled as it happened.

Stocks are positive halfway into Tuesday’s trading session. As of 12:00 p.m. EST, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq 100 are up 0.3%, 0.1%, and 0.1%, respectively. Last Updated 4:15PM EST Stock indices finished Tuesday’s trading session in negative territory as investors await tomorrow’s inflation report. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq 100 decreased 0.61%, 0.92%, and 0.97%, respectively.

My back of the napkin math suggests to me that in the NASDAQ alone, this fake CPI report cost investors some $90 billion dollars. For reference, we spend less than that on HUD as a nation. Of course I will acknowledge corrections on the losses, as will I accept that markets gyrate, but heavy players believe that this report specifically caused a fall, this is not just idle speculation.

We need to consider the potential for havoc on social media. Literally one ill-intended tweet could cause a panic, and it could be related to anything. At one point are we going to step in and more heavily regulate this so-called venue for “free speech” and solve this issue?

Someone, with bad intentions, pulled the economic equivalent of yelling “fire” in a theater.

And investors got burned by a phony inferno.

-ROC

If you like my work you can support me at https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-todd-rule-of-claw-rebuild-life

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/15/2110544/-A-Very-FAKE-Inflation-Report-Circulated-on-Social-Media-It-Caused-Very-REAL-Economic-Market-Damages

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