{"id":37690,"date":"2013-04-20T09:22:58","date_gmt":"2013-04-20T13:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/forex-news\/?p=37690"},"modified":"2013-04-20T09:22:58","modified_gmt":"2013-04-20T13:22:58","slug":"why-is-the-media-not-reporting-this-positive-gold-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2013\/04\/20\/why-is-the-media-not-reporting-this-positive-gold-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Is the Media Not reporting This Positive Gold Story?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bill Bonner<\/strong><\/p>\n

Uh-oh… We’ve got good news and bad news. But you’ll have to figure out which is which.<\/p>\n

We also have what is probably the most important thing you will read this year…<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the Dow fell again \u2013 81 points. Gold went up \u2013 by almost
\n$10 per ounce. Gold does not seem inclined to go down much more… at
\nleast, not immediately. And though some big players seem to be dumping
\ngold \u2013 we won’t mention any names \u2013 most of the gold orders are buys,
\nnot sells.<\/p>\n

Here’s Paul Tustain, CEO of physical gold storage business BullionVault<\/strong><\/a>, on gold’s recent correction<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

[H]ere are some BullionVault
\nstatistics from the last few days, which I think offer a useful
\nreminder about how markets work. Remember, first of all, that for
\nall those people who sold in a bit of a panic, someone bought.<\/em><\/p>\n

1. Monday and Tuesday were our strongest 48-hour period for new customers this year.<\/em><\/p>\n

2. Since Friday, the gross value of
\ncustomer bullion sales increased markedly. About 1% of gold we look
\nafter was sold back to the main market. That was characterized by a few
\nlarge sellers. Holders of 99% of BullionVault inventory were not
\npanicked.<\/em><\/p>\n

3. Those who did sell have mostly
\nnot withdrawn their cash from the BullionVault system. To me, that
\nsuggests they may be intending to buy back into gold sooner rather than
\nlater.<\/em><\/p>\n

4. We normally have about 230
\ndeposits a day (300 on a Monday) and about 100 withdrawals a day (120 on
\na Monday). Mondays are usually higher because they include weekend
\nactivity. On Monday, we had 723 deposits versus 284 withdrawals. On
\nTuesday, we had 732 deposits versus 150 withdrawals.<\/em><\/p>\n

5. Monday was a record day for business transacted, beating the previous peak of September 2011.<\/em><\/p>\n

Candy for the Mind<\/h3>\n

And now… here’s why you really shouldn’t pay attention to any news.
\nIt’s “public information” \u2013 with little integrity, little quality and
\nlittle usefulness.<\/p>\n

Here’s our friend, the Swiss novelist Rolf Dobelli.<\/p>\n

News is bad for you. It’s like sugar.
\nIt gives you a rush. It’s a distraction from your own concerns. It’s
\neasy to digest. But this “candy for the mind” can be toxic.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the past few decades, the fortunate
\namong us have recognized the hazards of living with an overabundance of
\nfood (obesity, diabetes) and have started to change our diets. But most
\nof us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to
\nthe body.<\/em><\/p>\n

News is easy to digest. The media feeds
\nus small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don’t really concern our
\nlives and don’t require thinking. That’s why we experience almost no
\nsaturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which
\nrequire thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes,
\nwhich are bright-colored candies for the mind.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today, we have reached the same point
\nin relation to information that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food.
\nWe are beginning to recognize how toxic news can be.<\/em><\/p>\n

News Misleads<\/em><\/h3>\n

Take the following event (borrowed from
\nNassim Taleb). A car drives over a bridge, and the bridge collapses.
\nWhat does the news media focus on? The car. The person in the car. Where
\nhe came from. Where he planned to go. How he experienced the crash (if
\nhe survived). But that is all irrelevant. What’s relevant? The
\nstructural stability of the bridge.<\/em><\/p>\n

That’s the underlying risk that has
\nbeen lurking and could lurk in other bridges. But the car is flashy,
\nit’s dramatic, it’s a person (non-abstract), and it’s news that’s cheap
\nto produce. News leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk
\nmap in our heads. So terrorism is overrated. Chronic stress is
\nunderrated. The collapse of Lehman Brothers is overrated. Fiscal
\nirresponsibility is underrated. Astronauts are overrated. Nurses are
\nunderrated.<\/em><\/p>\n

We are not rational enough to be
\nexposed to the press. Watching an airplane crash on television is going
\nto change your attitude toward that risk, regardless of its real
\nprobability. If you think you can compensate with the strength of your
\nown inner contemplation, you are wrong. Bankers and economists \u2013 who
\nhave powerful incentives to compensate for news-borne hazards \u2013 have
\nshown that they cannot. The only solution: Cut yourself off from news
\nconsumption entirely.<\/em><\/p>\n

News Is Irrelevant<\/em><\/h3>\n

Out of the approximately 10,000 news
\nstories you have read in the last 12 months, name one that \u2013 because you
\nconsumed it \u2013 allowed you to make a better decision about a serious
\nmatter affecting your life, your career or your business. The point is:
\nThe consumption of news is irrelevant to you. But people find it very
\ndifficult to recognize what’s relevant. It’s much easier to recognize
\nwhat’s new. The relevant versus the new is the fundamental battle of the
\ncurrent age.<\/em><\/p>\n

Media organizations want you to believe
\nthat news offers you some sort of a competitive advantage. Many fall
\nfor that. We get anxious when we’re cut off from the flow of news. In
\nreality, news consumption is a competitive disadvantage. The less news
\nyou consume, the bigger the advantage you have.<\/em><\/p>\n

News Has No Explanatory Power<\/em><\/h3>\n

News items are bubbles popping on the
\nsurface of a deeper world. Will accumulating facts help you understand
\nthe world? Sadly, no. The relationship is inverted. The important
\nstories are non-stories: slow, powerful movements that develop below
\njournalists’ radar but have a transforming effect. The more “news
\nfactoids” you digest, the less of the big picture you will understand.
\nIf more information leads to higher economic success, we’d expect
\njournalists to be at the top of the pyramid. That’s not the case.<\/em><\/p>\n

News Is Toxic to the Body<\/em><\/h3>\n

It constantly triggers the limbic
\nsystem. Panicky stories spur the release of cascades of glucocorticoid
\n(cortisol). This deregulates your immune system and inhibits the release
\nof growth hormones. In other words, your body finds itself in a state
\nof chronic stress. High glucocorticoid levels cause impaired digestion,
\nlack of growth (cell, hair, bone), nervousness and susceptibility to
\ninfections. The other potential side effects include fear, aggression,
\ntunnel vision and desensitization.<\/em><\/p>\n

News Increases Cognitive Errors<\/em><\/h3>\n

News feeds the mother of all cognitive
\nerrors: confirmation bias. In the words of Warren Buffett: “What the
\nhuman being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that
\ntheir prior conclusions remain intact.” News exacerbates this flaw. We
\nbecome prone to overconfidence, take stupid risks and misjudge
\nopportunities. It also exacerbates another cognitive error: the story
\nbias. Our brains crave stories that “make sense” \u2013 even if they don’t
\ncorrespond to reality. Any journalist who writes, “The market moved
\nbecause of X” or “The company went bankrupt because of Y” is an idiot. I
\nam fed up with this cheap way of “explaining” the world.<\/em><\/p>\n

News Inhibits Thinking<\/em><\/h3>\n

Thinking requires concentration<\/strong><\/a>.
\nConcentration requires uninterrupted time. News pieces are specifically
\nengineered to interrupt you. They are like viruses that steal attention
\nfor their own purposes. News makes us shallow thinkers.<\/em><\/p>\n

But it’s worse than that. News severely
\naffects memory. There are two types of memory. Long-range memory’s
\ncapacity is nearly infinite, but working memory is limited to a certain
\namount of slippery data. The path from short-term to long-term memory is
\na choke point in the brain, but anything you want to understand must
\npass through it. If this passageway is disrupted, nothing gets through.<\/em><\/p>\n

Because news disrupts concentration, it
\nweakens comprehension. Online news has an even worse impact. In a 2001
\nstudy, two scholars in Canada showed that comprehension declines as the
\nnumber of hyperlinks in a document increases. Why? Because whenever a
\nlink appears, your brain has to at least make the choice not to click,
\nwhich in itself is distracting. News is an intentional interruption
\nsystem.<\/em><\/p>\n

News Works Like a Drug<\/em><\/h3>\n

As stories develop, we want to know how
\nthey continue. With hundreds of arbitrary story lines in our heads,
\nthis craving is increasingly compelling and hard to ignore.<\/em><\/p>\n

Scientists used to think that the dense
\nconnections formed among the 100 billion neurons inside our skulls were
\nlargely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. Today we know that this
\nis not the case. Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form
\nnew ones. The more news we consume, the more we exercise the neural
\ncircuits devoted to skimming and multitasking while ignoring those used
\nfor reading deeply and thinking with profound focus.<\/em><\/p>\n

Most news consumers \u2013 even if they used
\nto be avid book readers \u2013 have lost the ability to absorb lengthy
\narticles or books. After four, five pages they get tired, their
\nconcentration vanishes, they become restless. It’s not because they got
\nolder or their schedules became more onerous. It’s because the physical
\nstructure of their brains has changed.<\/em><\/p>\n

News Wastes Time<\/em><\/h3>\n

If you read the newspaper for 15
\nminutes each morning, then check the news for 15 minutes during lunch
\nand 15 minutes before you go to bed, then add five minutes here and
\nthere when you’re at work, then count distraction and refocusing time,
\nyou will lose at least half a day every week. Information is no longer a
\nscarce commodity. But attention is. You are not that irresponsible with
\nyour money, reputation or health. Why give away your mind?<\/em><\/p>\n

News Makes Us Passive<\/em><\/h3>\n

News stories are overwhelmingly about
\nthings you cannot influence. The daily repetition of news about things
\nwe can’t act upon makes us passive. It grinds us down until we adopt a
\nworldview that is pessimistic, desensitized, sarcastic and fatalistic.
\nThe scientific term is “learned helplessness.” It’s a bit of a stretch,
\nbut I would not be surprised if news consumption at least partially
\ncontributes to the widespread disease of depression.<\/em><\/p>\n

News Kills Creativity<\/em><\/h3>\n

Finally, things we already know limit
\nour creativity. This is one reason that mathematicians, novelists,
\ncomposers and entrepreneurs often produce their most creative works at a
\nyoung age. Their brains enjoy a wide, uninhabited space that emboldens
\nthem to come up with and pursue novel ideas. I don’t know a single truly
\ncreative mind who is a news junkie \u2013 not a writer, not a composer,
\nmathematician, physician, scientist, musician, designer, architect or
\npainter.<\/em><\/p>\n

On the other hand, I know a bunch of
\nviciously uncreative minds who consume news like drugs. If you want to
\ncome up with old solutions, read news. If you are looking for new
\nsolutions, don’t.<\/em><\/p>\n

Society needs journalism \u2013 but in a
\ndifferent way. Investigative journalism is always relevant. We need
\nreporting that polices our institutions and uncovers truth. But
\nimportant findings don’t have to arrive in the form of news. Long
\njournal articles and in-depth books are good, too.<\/em><\/p>\n

I have now gone without news for four
\nyears, so I can see, feel and report the effects of this freedom
\nfirsthand: less disruption, less anxiety, deeper thinking, more time,
\nmore insights. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.<\/em><\/p>\n

[This is an edited extract from an essay first published at dobelli.com<\/strong><\/a>.]<\/p>\n

Regards,<\/p>\n

\"Bill<\/p>\n

Bill<\/p>\n

To learn more about Bill visit his Google+<\/a> page or Bill Bonner’s Diary<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bill Bonner Uh-oh… We’ve got good news and bad news. But you’ll have to figure out which is which. We also have what is probably the most important thing you will read this year… Yesterday, the Dow fell again \u2013 81 points. Gold went up \u2013 by almost $10 per ounce. Gold does not … <\/p>\n

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