| | | Page 1, 2 | Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know
| Omega
User ID: 340280
4/27/2008 11:16 AM
Report abusive post | Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know
| Quote |
Spot on article on how the US Gov. lies their ass off on economic numbers in a desperate attempt to keep the sheep from bleating.
Important safety tip-start bleating now.
Sheep.
[link to www.mindfully.org]
Numbers Racket
Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know
KEVIN PHILLIPS
Harper's Magazine v.316, n.1896 1may2008
Almost four decades have passed since the United States scrapped its last currency ties to precious metals. our copper and nickel coinage still retains some metallic value, but not nearly enough for the purpose of currency tampering---the historic temptation of inflation-plagued or otherwise wayward governments, including, at times, our own. Instead, since the 1960s, Washington has been forced to gull its citizens and creditors by debasing official statistics: the vital instruments with which the vigor and muscle of the American economy are measured. The effect of the past twenty-five years, has been to create a false sense of economic achievement and rectitude, allowing us to maintain artificially low interest rates, massive government borrowing, and a dangerous reliance on mortgage and financial debt even as real economic growth has been slower than claimed. If Washington's harping on weapons of mass destruction was essential to buoy public support for the invasion of Iraq, the use of deceptive statistics has played its own vital role in convincing many Americans that the U.S. economy is stronger, fairer, more productive, more dominant, and richer with opportunity than it actually is.
The corruption has tainted the very measures that most shape public perception of the economy—the monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI), which serves as the chief bellwether of inflation; the quarterly Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which tracks the U.S. economy's overall growth; and the monthly unemployment figure, which for the general public is perhaps the most vivid indicator of economic health or infirmity. Not only do governments, businesses, and individuals use these yardsticks in their decision-making but minor revisions in the data can mean major changes in household circumstances—inflation measurements help determine interest rates, federal interest payments on the national debt, and cost-of-living increases for wages, pensions, and Social Security benefits. And, of course, our statistics have political consequences too. An administration is helped when it can mouth banalities about price levels being "anchored" as food and energy costs begin to soar.
The truth, though it would not exactly set Americans free, would at least open a window to wider economic and political understanding. Readers should ask themselves how much angrier the electorate might be if the media, over the past five years, had been citing 8 percent unemployment (instead of 5 percent), 5 percent inflation (instead of 2 percent), and average annual growth in the 1 percent range (instead of the 3–4 percent range). We might ponder as well who profits from a low-growth U.S. economy hidden under statistical camouflage. Might it be Washington politicos and affluent elites, anxious to mislead voters, coddle the financial markets, and tamp down expensive cost-of-living increases for wages and pensions?
Let me stipulate: the deception arose gradually, at no stage stemming from any concerted or cynical scheme. There was no grand conspiracy, just accumulating opportunisms. As we will see, the political blame for the slow, piecemeal distortion is bipartisan—both Democratic and Republican administrations had a hand in the abetting of political dishonesty, reckless debt, and a casino-like financial sector. To see how, we must revisit forty years of economic and statistical dissembling.
Two Views of Consumer Inflation
Sources: John Williams, ShadowStats.com
U.S. Bureau of Labor
A SHORT HISTORY OF "POLLYANNA CREEP"
This apt phrase originated with John Williams, a California-based economic analyst and statistician who "shadows," as he puts it, the official Washington numbers. In a 2006 interview, Williams noted that although few Americans ever see the fine print, the government "always footnotes the changes and provides all the fine detail. Nonetheless, some of the changes are nothing short of remarkable, and the pattern over time is what I call Pollyanna Creep." Williams is one of the small group of economists and analysts who have paid any attention to the phenomenon. A few have pointed out the understatement of the Consumer Price Index--the billionaire bond manager Bill Gross has described it as an "haute con job," and Bloomberg columnist John Wasik has dismissed it as "a testament to the art of spin." In 2003 a University of Chicago economist named Austan Goolsbee (now a senior economic adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign) published an op-ed in the New York Times pointing out how the government has minimized the depth of the 2001-2002 U.S. recession, having "cooked the books" to misstate and minimize the unemployment numbers. Unfortunately, the critics have tended to train their axes on a single abuse, missing the broad forest of statistical misinformation that has grown up over the past four decades.
The story starts after the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961, when high jobless numbers marred the image of Camelot-on-the-Potomac and the new administration appointed a committee to weigh changes. The result, implemented a few years later, was that out-of-work Americans who had stopped looking for jobs—even if this was because none could he found—were labeled "discouraged workers" and excluded from the ranks of the unemployed, where many, if not most, of them had been previously classified. Lyndon Johnson, for his part, was widely rumored to have personally scrutinized and sometimes tweaked Gross National Product numbers before their release; and by the 1969 fiscal year, Johnson had orchestrated a "unified budget" that combined Social Security with the rest of the federal outlays. This innovation allowed the surplus receipts in the former to mask the emerging deficit in the latter.
Richard Nixon, besides continuing the unified budget, developed his own taste for statistical improvement. He proposed albeit unsuccessfully—that the Labor Department, which prepared both seasonally adjusted and non-adjusted unemployment numbers, should just publish whichever number was lower. In a more consequential move, he asked his second Federal Reserve chairman, Arthur Burns, to develop what became an ultimately famous division between "core" inflation and headline inflation. It the Consumer Price Index was calculated by tracking a bundle of prices, so-called core inflation would simply exclude, because of "volatility," categories that happened to he troublesome: at that time, food and energy. Core inflation could he spotlighted when the headline number was embarrassing, as it was in 1973 and 1974. (The economic commentator Barry Ritholtz has joked that core inflation is better called "inflation ex-inflation"—i.e., inflation after the inflation has been excluded.)
I n 1983, under the Reagan Administration, inflation was further finagled when the Bureau of Labor Statistics decided that housing, too, was overstating the Consumer Price Index; the BLS substituted an entirely different "Owner Equivalent Rent" measurement, based on what a homeowner might get for renting his or her house. This methodology, controversial at the time but still in place today, simply sidestepped what was happening in the real world of homeowner costs. Because low inflation encourages low interest rates, which in turn make it much easier to borrow money, the BLS's decision no doubt encouraged, during the late 1980s, the large and often speculative expansion in private debt—much of which involved real estate, and some of which went spectacularly bad between 1989 and 1992 in the savings-and-loan, real estate, and junk-bond scandals. Also, on the unemployment front, as Austan Goolsbee pointed out in his New York Times op-ed, the Reagan Administration further trimmed the number by reclassifying members of the military as "employed" instead of outside the labor force.
The distortional inclinations of the next president, George H.W. Bush, came into focus in 1990, when Michael Boskin, the chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers, proposed to reorient U.S. economic statistics principally to reduce the measured rate of inflation. His stated grand ambition was to move the calculus away from old industrial-era methodologies toward the emerging services economy and the expanding retail and financial sectors. Skeptics, however, countered that the underlying goal, driven by worry over federal budget deficits, was to reduce the inflation rate in order to reduce federal payments—from interest on the national debt to cost-of-living outlays for government employees, retirees, and Social Security recipients.
It was left to the Clinton Administration to implement these convoluted CPI measurements, which were reiterated in 1996 through a commission headed by Boskin and promoted by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. The Clintonites also extended the Pollyanna Creep of the nation's employment figures. Although expunged from the ranks of the unemployed, discouraged workers had nevertheless been counted in the larger workforce. But in 1994, the Bureau of Labor Statistics redefined the workforce to include only that small percentage of the discouraged who had been seeking work for less than a year. The longer-term discouraged—some 4 million U.S. adults—fell out of the main monthly tally. Some now call them the "hidden unemployed." For its last four years, the Clinton Administration also thinned the monthly household economic sampling by one sixth, from 60,000 to 50,000, and a disproportionate number of the dropped households were in the inner cities; the reduced sample (and a new adjustment formula) is believed to have reduced black unemployment estimates and eased worsening poverty figures.
Despite the present Bush Administration's overall penchant for manipulating data (e.g., Iraq, climate change), it has yet to match its predecessor in economic revisions. In 2002, the administration did, however, for two months fail to publish the Mass Layoff Statistics report, because of its embarrassing nature after the 2001 recession had supposedly ended; it introduced, that same year, an "experimental" new CPI calculation (the C-CPI-U), which shaved another 0.3 percent off the official CPI; and since 2006 it has stopped publishing the M-3 money supply numbers, which captured rising inflationary impetus from bank credit activity. In 2005, Bush proposed, but Congress shunned, a new, narrower historical wage basis for calculating future retiree Social Security benefits.
By late last year, the Gallup Poll reported that public faith in the federal government had sunk below even post-Watergate levels. Whether statistical deceit played any direct role is unclear, but it does seem that citizens have got the right general idea. After forty years of manipulation, more than a few measurements of the U.S. economy have been distorted beyond recognition.
What Does "Unemployment" Mean?
source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics
Red= Including workers who are
part-time for "economic reasons"
Yellow= Including other "marginally
attached" workers
Blue= Including "discouraged" workers
Black= The official "unemployment rate"
AMERICA'S "OPACITY" CRISIS
Last year, the word "opacity," hitherto reserved for Scrabble games, became a mainstay of the financial press. A credit market panic had been triggered by something called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which in some cases wre too complicated to be fathomed even by experts. The packagers and marketers of CDOs were forced to acknowledge that their hypertechnical securities were fraught with "opacity"-a convenient, ethically and legally judgment-free word for lack of honest labeling. And far from being rare, opacity is commonplace in contemporary finance. Intricacy has become a conduit for deception. Exotic derivative instruments with alphabet-soup initials command notional values in the hundreds of trillions of dollars, but nobody knows what they are really worth. Some days, half of the trades on major stock exchanges come from so-called black boxes programmed with everything from binomial trees to algorithms; most federal securities regulators couldn't explain them, much less monitor them.
Transparency is the hallmark of democracy, but we now find ourselves with economic statistics every bit as opaque—and as vulnerable to double-dealing—as a subprime CDO. Of the "big three" statistics, let us start with unemployment. Most of the people tired of looking for work, as mentioned above, are no longer counted in the workforce, though they do still show up in one of the auxiliary unemployment numbers. The BLS has six different regular jobless measurements—U-1, U-2, U-3 (the one routinely cited), U-4, U-5, and U-6. In January 2008, the U-4 to U-6 series produced unemployment numbers ranging from 5.2 percent to 9.0 percent, all above the "official" number. The series nearest to real-world conditions is, not surprisingly, the highest: U-6, which includes part-timers looking for full-time employment as well as other members of the "marginally attached," a new catchall meaning those not looking for a job but who say they want one. Yet this does not even include the Americans who (as Austan Goolsbee puts it) have been "bought off the unemployment rolls" by government programs such as Social Security disability, whose recipients are classified as outside the labor force.
Second is the Gross Domestic Product, which in itself represents something of a fudge: federal economists used the Gross National Product until 1991, when rising U.S. international debt costs made the narrower GDP assessment more palatable. The GDP has been subject to many further fiddles, the most manipulatable of which are the adjustments made for the presumed starting up and ending of businesses (the "birth/death of businesses" equation) and the amounts that the Bureau of Economic Analysis "imputes" to nationwide personal income data (known as phantom income boosters, or imputations; for example, the imputed income from living in one's own home, or the benefit one receives from a free checking account, or the value of employer-paid health-and-life-insurance premiums). During 2007, believe it or not, imputed income accounted for some 15 percent of GDP. John Williams, the economic statistician, is briskly contemptuous of GDP numbers over the past quarter century. "Upward growth biases built into GDP modeling since the early 1980s have rendered this important series nearly worthless," he wrote in 2004. "[T]he recessions of 1990/1991 and 2001 were much longer and deeper than currently reported [and] lesser downturns in 1986 and 1995 were missed completely."
Nothing, however, can match the tortured evolution of the third key number, the somewhat misnamed Consumer Price Index. Government economists themselves admit that the revisions during the Clinton years worked to reduce the current inflation figures by more than a percentage point, but the overall distortion has been considerably more severe. Just the 1983 manipulation, which substituted "owner equivalent rent" for home-ownership costs, served to understate or reduce inflation during the recent housing boom by 3 to 4 percentage points. Moreover, since the 1990s, the CPI has been subjected to three other adjustments, all downward and all dubious: product substitution (if flank steak gets too expensive, people are assumed to shift to hamburger, but nobody is assumed to move up to filet mignon), geometric weighting (goods and services in which costs are rising most rapidly get a lower weighting for a presumed reduction in consumption), and, most bizarrely, hedonic adjustment, an unusual computation by which additional quality is attributed to a product or service.
The hedonic adjustment, in particular, is as hard to estimate as it is to take seriously. (That it was launched during the tenure of the Oval Office's preeminent hedonist, William Jefferson Clinton, only adds to the absurdity.) No small part of the condemnation must lie in the timing. If quality improvements are to be counted, that count should have begun in the 1950s and 1960s, when such products and services as air-conditioning, air travel, and automatic transmissions—and these are just the A's!—improved consumer satisfaction to a comparable or greater degree than have more recent innovations. That the change was made only in the late Nineties shrieks of politics and opportunism, not integrity of measurement. Most of the time, hedonic adjustment is used to reduce the effective cost of goods, which in turn reduces the stated rate of inflation. Reversing the theory, however, the declining quality of goods or services should adjust effective prices and thereby add to inflation, but that side of the equation generally goes missing. "All in all," Williams points out, "if you were to peel back changes that were made in the CPI going back to the Carter years, you'd see that the CPI would now be 3.5 percent to 4 percent higher"—meaning that, because of lost CPI increases, Social Security checks would be 70 percent greater than they currently are.
Furthermore, when discussing price pressure, government officials invariably bring up "core" inflation, which excludes precisely the two categories—food and energy—now verging on another 1970s-style price surge. This year we have already seen major U.S. food and grocery companies, among them Kellogg and Kraft, report sharp declines in earnings caused by rising grain and dairy prices. Central banks from Europe to Japan worry that the biggest inflation jumps in ten to fifteen years could get in the way of reducing interest rates to cope with weakening economies. Even the U.S. Labor Department acknowledged that in January, the price of imported goods had increased 13.7 percent compared with a year earlier, the biggest surge since record-keeping began in 1982. From Maine to Australia, from Alaska to the Middle East, a hydra-headed inflation is on the loose, unleashed by the many years of rapid growth in the supply of money from the world's central banks (not least the U.S. Federal Reserve), as well as by massive public and private debt creation.
THE U.S. ECONOMY EX-DISTORTION
The real numbers, to most economically minded Americans, would be a face full of cold water. Based on the criteria in place a quarter century ago, today's U.S. unemployment rate is somewhere between 9 percent and 12 percent; the inflation rate is as high as 7 or even 10 percent; economic growth since the recession of 2001 has been mediocre, despite a huge surge in the wealth and incomes of the superrich, and we are falling back into recession. If what we have been sold in recent years has been delusional "Pollyanna Creep," what we really need today is a picture of our economy ex-distortion. For what it would reveal is a nation in deep difficulty not just domestically but globally.
Undermeasurement of inflation, in particular, hangs over our heads like a guillotine. To acknowledge it would send interest rates climbing, and thereby would endanger the viability of the massive buildup of public and private debt (from less than $11 trillion in 1987 to $49 trillion last year) that props up the American economy. Moreover, the rising cost of pensions, benefits, borrowing, and interest payments—all indexed or related to inflation—could join with the cost of financial bailouts to overwhelm the federal budget. As inflation and interest rates have been kept artificially suppressed, the United States has been indentured to its volatile financial sector, with its predilection for leverage and risky buccaneering.
Arguably, the unraveling has already begun. As Robert Hardaway, a professor at the University of Denver, pointed out last September, the subprime lending crisis "can be directly traced back to the [1983] BLS decision to exclude the price of housing from the CPI. . .With the illusion of low inflation inducing lenders to offer 6 percent loans, not only has speculation run rampant on the expectations of ever-rising home prices, but home buyers by the millions have been tricked into buying homes even though they only qualified for the teaser rates." Were mainstream interest rates to jump into the 7 to 9 percent range—which could happen if inflation were to spur new concern—both Washington and Wall Street would be walking in quicksand. The make-believe economy of the past two decades, with its asset bubbles, massive borrowing, and rampant data distortion, would be in serious jeopardy. The U.S. dollar, off more than 40 percent against the euro since 2002, could slip down an even rockier slope.
The credit markets are fearful, and the financial markets are nervous. If gloom continues, our humbugged nation may truly regret losing sight of history, risk, and common sense.
Handguns are a skill; shotguns an art; rifles a science.
_____________________________________
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner.
Disarmament is the precursor to Genocide.
Better to take action now rather than chances later. Your choice. |
| Omega
User ID: 340280
4/27/2008 11:27 AM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
I know, the article is beyond you woo woo's....so sad....
Handguns are a skill; shotguns an art; rifles a science.
_____________________________________
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner.
Disarmament is the precursor to Genocide.
Better to take action now rather than chances later. Your choice. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 405868
4/27/2008 11:29 AM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
"Pollyanna Creep" Got to love that!
I'm to the point where I just don't believe anything from the media and from government.
Great article! |
| Omega
User ID: 340280
4/27/2008 11:32 AM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
I would add that due to recent energy and commodities and food price increases, real inflation annual in the US is approaching 20%.
Who here will be getting a 20% raise this year to cover it???
Didn't think so.......
Handguns are a skill; shotguns an art; rifles a science.
_____________________________________
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner.
Disarmament is the precursor to Genocide.
Better to take action now rather than chances later. Your choice. |
| CU
User ID: 327843
4/27/2008 11:37 AM
 | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
disturbing artical shaking my head as i read it, amazing how they held this false system all this time. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 405868
4/27/2008 11:38 AM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
There are some organizations out there who are supplying true inflationary statistics, like they were generated before Pollyanna Creep..LOL!
Of the ones I've heard, the true inflation rate is approximately 14%, best case. I know my raises over the last few years have been minimal...not because of poor performance, but it's either that, or face more lay-offs...our best raises are only about 3%....added up over a few years and figuring in true inflation, we're working ourselves poor... |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 368888
4/27/2008 11:40 AM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
Important safety tip-start bleating now.
Public faith in the federal government had sunk below even post-Watergate levels.
The U.S. dollar, off more than 40 percent against the euro since 2002, could slip down an even rockier slope. Quoting: Omega
LOL to the suggestion for us to start bleating now!
Don't take on more debt if possible. Have a full pantry, heirloom seeds and garden.
Anything else we can/should do???? |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 17960
4/27/2008 11:44 AM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
Honest Truth about money System and Debt Collection in U.S.
[link to www.youtube.com]
 |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 405868
4/27/2008 11:44 AM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
Important safety tip-start bleating now.
Public faith in the federal government had sunk below even post-Watergate levels.
The U.S. dollar, off more than 40 percent against the euro since 2002, could slip down an even rockier slope.
LOL to the suggestion for us to start bleating now!
Don't take on more debt if possible. Have a full pantry, heirloom seeds and garden.
Anything else we can/should do???? Quoting: Anonymous Coward 368888
Yes...the only true solution is boot the "Federal" Reserve out of the country...We've done it twice before...barring that, anything else is futile....oh, you didn't mention fire power...might come in handy! |
| Omega
User ID: 340280
4/27/2008 11:45 AM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
Important safety tip-start bleating now.
Public faith in the federal government had sunk below even post-Watergate levels.
The U.S. dollar, off more than 40 percent against the euro since 2002, could slip down an even rockier slope.
LOL to the suggestion for us to start bleating now!
Don't take on more debt if possible. Have a full pantry, heirloom seeds and garden.
Anything else we can/should do???? Quoting: Anonymous Coward 368888
Garden
:grdn2:
Buy guns, your gonna need em'.
Handguns are a skill; shotguns an art; rifles a science.
_____________________________________
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner.
Disarmament is the precursor to Genocide.
Better to take action now rather than chances later. Your choice. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 368888
4/27/2008 11:48 AM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
Don't take on more debt if possible. Have a full pantry, heirloom seeds and garden.
Anything else we can/should do????
Yes...the only true solution is boot the "Federal" Reserve out of the country...We've done it twice before...barring that, anything else is futile....oh, you didn't mention fire power...might come in handy! Quoting: Anonymous Coward 405868
Well, I guess that means start buying gold/silver to have on hand just in case. |
| CaGeD
User ID: 423694
4/27/2008 11:48 AM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
I would add that due to recent energy and commodities and food price increases, real inflation annual in the US is approaching 20%.
Who here will be getting a 20% raise this year to cover it???
Didn't think so....... Quoting: Omega
Considering inflation, where does the DOW currently stand vs 2000, 1990, and 1980? |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 422790
4/27/2008 11:48 AM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
I know, the article is beyond you woo woo's....so sad.... Quoting: Omega
Pfffttt. Don't flatter yourself survivalist boy.
This has been out for a while, some of us actually subscribe to magazines other than Mother Earth News and Soldier of Fortune. |
| Omega
User ID: 340280
4/27/2008 11:51 AM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
I would add that due to recent energy and commodities and food price increases, real inflation annual in the US is approaching 20%.
Who here will be getting a 20% raise this year to cover it???
Didn't think so.......
Considering inflation, where does the DOW currently stand vs 2000, 1990, and 1980? Quoting: CaGeD
2000 should be around 9k. At least thats the statistic I see around the net, other years, don't know.
I assume also you mean the Dow if you considered the devaluation of the dollar since then?
Also keep in mind the DOW is the headline number J6P watches. This is where the PPT spends it's resources to pimp it up. Much easier to manipulate the 30 stocks that make up the DOW.
Handguns are a skill; shotguns an art; rifles a science.
_____________________________________
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner.
Disarmament is the precursor to Genocide.
Better to take action now rather than chances later. Your choice. |
| Omega
User ID: 340280
4/27/2008 11:56 AM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
I know, the article is beyond you woo woo's....so sad....
Pfffttt. Don't flatter yourself survivalist boy.
This has been out for a while, some of us actually subscribe to magazines other than Mother Earth News and Soldier of Fortune. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 422790
Hahahahahahahha.
The point of my comments was to goad people into a response. I see it worked,lol....
Sorry, only rag I subscribe to is Shotgun News.
Handguns are a skill; shotguns an art; rifles a science.
_____________________________________
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner.
Disarmament is the precursor to Genocide.
Better to take action now rather than chances later. Your choice. |
| CaGeD
User ID: 423694
4/27/2008 11:56 AM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
I would add that due to recent energy and commodities and food price increases, real inflation annual in the US is approaching 20%.
Who here will be getting a 20% raise this year to cover it???
Didn't think so.......
Considering inflation, where does the DOW currently stand vs 2000, 1990, and 1980?
2000 should be around 9k. At least thats the statistic I see around the net, other years, don't know.
I assume also you mean the Dow if you considered the devaluation of the dollar since then?
Also keep in mind the DOW is the headline number J6P watches. This is where the PPT spends it's resources to pimp it up. Much easier to manipulate the 30 stocks that make up the DOW. Quoting: Omega
Its all an illusion for the masses. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 112244
4/27/2008 11:58 AM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
I know, the article is beyond you woo woo's....so sad.... Quoting: Omega
Hey i resent being called a WOO WOO,damnit!!!  |
| LouisWinthorpeIII 
Self apointed knowitall
User ID: 384893
4/27/2008 12:01 PM
 | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
I would add that due to recent energy and commodities and food price increases, real inflation annual in the US is approaching 20%.
Who here will be getting a 20% raise this year to cover it???
Didn't think so....... Quoting: Omega
That's just this year... Just think about all the prior years...
I haven't gotten a sizable raise in over 7 years, and let me tell you the buying power I had 7 years ago was substantially better than now.
Everyone knows the books are cooked, but they have to lie as if they actually reported the real numbers people would freak, and there is no way we could afford SS.
Eventually the welfare state will fall, we simply cannot afford it.
"I don't know which was scarier...the speech...or the Congress cheering it. He evoked Lincoln. Whenever a President is going to get us into serious trouble...they always use Lincoln."
-2010 |
| Omega
User ID: 340280
4/27/2008 12:04 PM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
I would add that due to recent energy and commodities and food price increases, real inflation annual in the US is approaching 20%.
Who here will be getting a 20% raise this year to cover it???
Didn't think so.......
That's just this year... Just think about all the prior years...
I haven't gotten a sizable raise in over 7 years, and let me tell you the buying power I had 7 years ago was substantially better than now.
Everyone knows the books are cooked, but they have to lie as if they actually reported the real numbers people would freak, and there is no way we could afford SS.
Eventually the welfare state will fall, we simply cannot afford it. Quoting: LouisWinthorpeIII
Yup. I average about a 5% raise a year, and I drive 50 miles each way to work. Gas price is becoming a real issue. I do have a motorcycle and am an experienced rider, however these crazy frickin' Austin hippies will run ya off the road, almost got killed twice and if I wasn't paying attention I would have been toast. So I don't ride to work at this time, may be forced to if prices keep going up.
Everything is going up...across the board...and very quickly.....
Handguns are a skill; shotguns an art; rifles a science.
_____________________________________
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner.
Disarmament is the precursor to Genocide.
Better to take action now rather than chances later. Your choice. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 422790
4/27/2008 12:19 PM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
Doom is good, worse is better. Only then will our people wake up enough to pull this together and the race survive. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 378959
4/27/2008 12:23 PM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
Have seen Austan Goolsbee (now a senior economic adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign) in several interviews. He is the reason I am supporting Obama. The president's advisers probably have more influence than the president and I particularly like Austan. He always seems honest and straightforward. I am not surprised he is attempting to expose fraudulent government statistics. After all, anyone with a little common sense knows those numbers are cooked. Austan also puts right out there that the tax structure is unfair to certain groups of people and needs to be immediately corrected. He knows that numbers can lie and sees right through the shenanigans. He also know that we too can see through those lies. |
| Dervish
User ID: 424013
4/27/2008 12:24 PM
 | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
"Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war"
----------------
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.
Rudyard Kipling |
| Dervish
User ID: 424013
4/27/2008 12:24 PM
| | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
Wow, with real CPI like that no wonder the poor CEO's have to make so much money .
Thanks Omega. Nice article. The more I read the more I think it will snap. Very sudden, very quick, and very very painful.
"Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war"
----------------
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.
Rudyard Kipling |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 422790
4/27/2008 12:55 PM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
I know, the article is beyond you woo woo's....so sad....
Pfffttt. Don't flatter yourself survivalist boy.
This has been out for a while, some of us actually subscribe to magazines other than Mother Earth News and Soldier of Fortune.
Hahahahahahahha.
The point of my comments was to goad people into a response. I see it worked,lol....
Sorry, only rag I subscribe to is Shotgun News. Quoting: Omega
Alright, you've shown to be a good sport about the ribbing, and I apologize for the flip comments.
As timely as the Philips article is there is another, IMO even better in that same May issue of Harpers by Wendell Barry: Faustian Economics.
Mr. Barry is one of a handfull of men that I can point to today that I consider having wisdom. |
| Saiyan Ape Darkside
User ID: 423109
4/27/2008 1:49 PM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
My market timer, Jim Rohrbach, one of the best, says the markets the worst he's seen in 37 years. He thinks it's going to get better...
...But...
...IMHO... with the better chance that a demo comes into presidential power (statistically proven to happen after 2 terms of repubs) and hillary and osama both claiming to take the troops out of Iraq....
....If you think that oil prices are bad now, wait until Iran moves into Iraq (after the troops leave) and we (US, Israel) start world war 4.
Granted I'm not for the war and I never was. When all of it went down back in 2003, I was pissed off royaly. There was a reason Bush senior and Baker didn't do it during Kuwait.
Because they knew they couldn't control the tribal war that would follow.
Hey Omega, I started a beehouse hobby on my farm for fun. If TSHTF I'll still have a profitable means of trade. Thanks for all the heads up. I love GLP.
I |
| Omega
User ID: 340280
4/27/2008 1:53 PM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
My market timer, Jim Rohrbach, one of the best, says the markets the worst he's seen in 37 years. He thinks it's going to get better...
...But...
...IMHO... with the better chance that a demo comes into presidential power (statistically proven to happen after 2 terms of repubs) and hillary and osama both claiming to take the troops out of Iraq....
....If you think that oil prices are bad now, wait until Iran moves into Iraq (after the troops leave) and we (US, Israel) start world war 4.
Granted I'm not for the war and I never was. When all of it went down back in 2003, I was pissed off royaly. There was a reason Bush senior and Baker didn't do it during Kuwait.
Because they knew they couldn't control the tribal war that would follow.
Hey Omega, I started a beehouse hobby on my farm for fun. If TSHTF I'll still have a profitable means of trade. Thanks for all the heads up. I love GLP. Quoting: Saiyan Ape Darkside 423109
Thanks, and bee's be a good thing!!! They'll pollinate your crops-good luck with that endeavor, frankly I don't have the balls for it.....they might not like me and sting me to death,lol...
Handguns are a skill; shotguns an art; rifles a science.
_____________________________________
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner.
Disarmament is the precursor to Genocide.
Better to take action now rather than chances later. Your choice. |
| canislatrans
User ID: 339544
4/27/2008 1:57 PM
 | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
It's only a matter of time before people realize what's really going on.
Thanks for the article Omega!
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. |
| paladin
User ID: 424055
4/27/2008 2:00 PM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
I know, the article is beyond you woo woo's....so sad.... Quoting: Omega
hey omega..
this is a little over my head....but I will try..
this is I think from 2006....but it is still in play..
who is John Williams....meet the man...great read
[link to www.weedenco.com]
Shadowing Reality
Economist Keeps Tabs On Government’s “Creative”
Statistical Reports
Walter J. (John) Williams is the John Williams behind a fascinating website, [link to www.shadowstats.com,] which promises—and delivers—“analysis behind and beyond government economic reporting.” |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 424027
4/27/2008 2:01 PM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
How can anyone think the USA has a good economy? how many of you know people who are employed in a job that actually produces something that is exportable? USA makes nothing of any value. |
| Lester
User ID: 424059
4/27/2008 2:15 PM | | Re: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know | Quote |
The more time you waste trying to persuade the incapable, the less there is for you/yours.
Many, if not most, Americans are incapable. Incapable of drawing conclusions for themselves, incapable of breaking their scholastic and social conditioning, incapable of understanding how TPTB have consciously decided, planned, & implemented the circumstance for their demise.
Paladin asked for comments about some nitwit PM guy's ravings about how the economy was destined for greatnes.... In whose lifetime? Not my children's grandchildren's.
Can't see that the puzzle forms a vivid picture?
Never did a jigsaw when you were a kid? Never played Scrabble or Boggle?
The whole friggin thing is enough to boggle your head; by design. But I won't waste my time trying to persuade you.
Just because you can understand the macro/micro implications, and understand the reality of a system where all professionals at the highest levels have corrupted & ruined their field; failing to take ACTION means you Know Nothing!
Sitting around this place, "watching the veneer of civilization peel away" does you NFG.
The baloon has already gone up.
You should be ready, willing & able to fight for your life; for your loved ones' sake. Rather doubtful.
The whole house of cards will fall down in one hour.
Will you be under it or away from the cardtable?
You must realize that the money is no longer the issue.
The money cost them nothing to acquire and control, they can ruin it, burn it all up; makes them no matter. You may still have time to deploy your money, but you won't act. You can't trust your instincts, can't really believe what you are seeing. Like a bird entranced by a snake, you are unaware of what is coming.
I suck is a rough trade audience. Seen it all, mixed it up with the best of them... The only thing you will have that no one can take away from you is your brain. It is your primary weapon. Like a sharp stick, you find in the woods, hopefully you have seasoned it in the fire, hardening it into a tool you can be confident of.
Sometimes you just have to err on the side of caution.
This is one of those times. Better to be ready than to have been chumped. Your readiness is that honing and hardening. Get there and you will understand. Get there and you will Know.
Once your reliance is trust-worthy, you have commitment. Your commitment is to you and yours. God, if HE Guides you is The Supreme Deliverer. Yet, even HE is not working with those who don't follow HIS Lead. Without HIM, you are on your own; but if you know nothing else, maybe you will survive long enough to Know HIM?
Fortune Favors The Bold. Especiall the bold & intelligent.
Hope you have both attributes... |
| paladin
User ID: 424055
4/27/2008 2:22 PM | | | Page 1, 2 | |
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