US Economy Is A Potemkin Village

Here is an excellent (and accurate) analogy:

Money-printing turns out to be the grift that keeps on giving. The US stock markets retraced all their October jitter lines, and bonds plumped up nicely in anticipation of hot so-called “money” wending its digital way from other lands to American banks. Euroland, too, accepted some gift inflation as its currency weakened. The world seems to have forgotten for a long moment that all this was rather the opposite of what America’s central bank has been purported to seek lo these several years of QE heroics — namely, a little domestic inflation of its own to simulate if not stimulate the holy grail of economic growth. Of course all that has gotten is the Potemkin stock market, a fragile, one-dimensional edifice concealing the post-industrial slum that the on-the-ground economy has become behind it.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-03/fragile-potemkin-stock-market-conceals-post-industrial-slum

In case you've never heard the term, here is its definition:

The phrase "Potemkin village" (also "Potyomkin village", derived from the Russian: Потёмкинские деревни, Potyomkinskiye derevni) was originally used to describe a fake village, built only to impress. According to the story, Grigory Potemkin erected fake settlements along the banks of the Dnieper River in order to fool Empress Catherine II during her journey to Crimea in 1787. The phrase is now used, typically in politics and economics, to describe any construction (literal or figurative) built solely to deceive others into thinking that some situation is better than it really is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village