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DO NOT PANIC: The Dow Jones Industrial Average is a Rigged Game — and it Means Jack Shit.
Not to defend Donald Trump or anything but Wall Street’s favorite magic trick is making you think the Dow Jones Industrial Average means something. The media treats it like a holy grail of economic health, but I’m telling you the Dow is a rigged game, a carnival con, a corporate PR stunt designed to keep the rubes pacified while the real money gets siphoned off by the big boys.
First off, the Dow Jones Industrial Average isn’t some eternal, unchanging barometer of the economy. It’s a curated, hand-picked list of 30 companies that get swapped in and out whenever the powers that be decide they need a new coat of paint on their bullshit indicator. General Electric? Gone after over a century. Kodak? Booted long before it collapsed. The companies that struggle get shuffled out, and thriving ones get ushered in, so the number keeps climbing over time. It’s like keeping a sports team undefeated by benching your worst players and hiring ringers every season.
And guess what? That’s exactly the point. If the Dow truly reflected the health of the economy, it wouldn’t need a facelift every few years. The idea is to manufacture a sense of progress, to keep people thinking, “Hey, the Dow’s up, so everything must be fine!” Meanwhile, wages stagnate, the cost of living skyrockets, and…
