I’m working on a new piece on the propaganda effort on the economy coming out of Team Obama. Here’s a part:

“How green are our shoots!
Thus say both Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
And the public believes them. How come?

It all began in March. In the first televised interview by any sitting Fed chairman in 20 years (CBS 60 Minutes), Bernanke used the term, “green shoots” for the first time. He pointed out that the Dow Jones index had recovered from 12 year lows in 2008 and the banking system had stabilized. No more big banks would fail, he predicted (AFP, March 15, 2009).

Two months later, His Timness echoed Big Ben. Geithner cited reduced spreads on corporate and muni bonds, the reduction in costs in credit protection at the big banks, and smaller risk premiums in the interbank market. He too said the economy was recovering. (Tim Geithner, Statement before the Senate Banking Committee, May 20, 2009)

In June, World Bank President Robert Zoellick joined the ‘shooters.’ Zoellick is a former US trade representative notorious for forcing US government subsidies and trade policies inimical to small farmers onto emerging markets. Zoellick noted “signs of global recovery,” but cautioned that they might be killed off if protectionism were adopted (Reuters, June 8, 2009)

Translation: foreigners had better not object to US government-managed trade policies…or the global recovery will fold.

Put out….or look out.

Zoellick added his own revealing metaphor to the shooter lexicon: “Right now there is a low-grade fever; it isn’t full influenza, but we need to keep a close watch…”.[my emphasis]

[Oddly, Zoellick’s own employees at the World Bank contradicted their boss’s assessment in a report only a couple of weeks later (See “World Bank Global Economic Outlook” below]

In May billionaire hedge-fund manager George Soros was seeing green. And in July , chief wonk of the Obama economic team Lawrence Summers detected greenery in remarks to the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Green shoots were now being sighted by everyone:

*In July the International Monetary Fund published its World Economic Outlook update
The Fund revised expected global growth in 2010 upward to 2.5%. The main source of the improvement, it claimed, was a brightening outlook for Asia.

*Simon Johnson, IMF economist–turned-Peterson-Institute-spokesman-turned green-shooting-star even went on PBS to announce, “we are turning some sort of corner.” (August 20, 2009)

*Surveys of economists and business leaders in the summer showed that, in contrast to only a few months earlier, slightly more than half thought that the economy had bottomed.”

There’s a lot more I’m working on. Hope to have it on Lew Rockwell tomorrow, although I’d like to see it on some left-anarchist sites too. What began as a bit of trivia hunting (I was trying to figure out when the “green shoots” meme started) ended up throwing some interesting light on politics, the media, and the economy….