"Over the past twenty years, Americans have been fed a mash of confusing financial and economic information. Economist Ellen Frank's alternately enlightening and shocking volume shows us how what we've been taught to think about stocks, interest rates, personal opportunities, employment, government spending, and inflation distorts popular understanding of how the economy really operates. But public confusion serves a distinct political goal: to camouflage the transformation of economic policy from a tool for improving the living standards of all to a tool for securing privileges for the wealthy." "This combination of misleading rhetoric and misinformation implies, for instance, that it is possible for all of us to become wealthy by investing in the stock market: that 401(k) plans are better than pension plans because they give individuals responsibility and control over retirement savings, making us more responsible citizens; that low unemployment leads to inflation; and that rising inflation impedes progress and forces people into poverty."--BOOK JACKET.