A new Gallup poll out on June 14 shows that very few Americans have any faith in their core institutions, with banks and the media registering near the bottom of the people’s trust.
In the decade since the start of the housing crisis and subsequent bank bailouts, trust in America’s financial system has fallen from 49% in 2006, down to just 27% in 2016. And other institutions like the media have dropped to below even that percentage as only 20% of Americans trust their news outlets to provide them the truth and correct information.
Although rated worse than any other institution in the country, federal lawmakers are not alone in facing mass disdain by a US electorate who increasingly thinks that the system has stopped working. Only the military and police services saw over 50% of respondents express “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the job they do every day.
Wall Street faced the largest drop in public approval ratings compared to a decade ago, as the country has failed to rebound from the economic calamity precipitated by speculative excess by the finance industry – banks fell from a 49% confidence rating down to a 22% rating. Recent polling data shows that 8% of Americans have confidence in the broader US financial system.
Similarly, the polling participants have lost confidence in corporate-owned media outlets for their failure to hold public officials accountable or give readers an unbiased truth. Both television news and newspapers fell ten percentage points, to all-time low confidence ratings of 21% and 20%, respectively. - Sputnik News
These results validate why outlier Presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have achieved so much headway against the oligarchical establishment, and why business new outlets like CNBC have dropped in their ratings to record lows following their reporting of the financial collapse eight years ago.
President Abraham Lincoln once said, you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. And after decades of lies, corruption, wars, and division that has permeated from all the core societal institutions people once trusted in, it should come as no surprise that change is occurring right now, in both violent and non-violent ways and means.
Kenneth Schortgen Jr is a writer for Secretsofthefed.com, Examiner.com,Roguemoney.net, and To the Death Media, and hosts the popular web blog, The Daily Economist. Ken can also be heard Wednesday afternoons giving an weekly economic report on the Angel Clark radio show.