Category: Economic Statistics
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
The Most Rigged Economic Indicators / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Money_Morning
Garrett Baldwin writes: On August 2, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will report the official unemployment rate. But this number doesn't tell the accurate story of the jobs picture here in the United States.
That's usually the case with government-produced economic indicators. Whatever the government figure will say, it will not truly reflect reality. Simply put, it's a rigged number.
When it comes to cheating the numbers, nobody does it better than Uncle Sam.
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Tuesday, April 30, 2013
GDP Economic Growth Statistics Bag of Tricks / Economics / Economic Statistics
By: Michael_Pento
If you're not happy with the stumbling U.S. economy all you have to do is just wait a few more months. It seems the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) will perform a little hocus pocus on the GDP numbers starting in July 2013. According to the Financial Times, U.S. GDP would become 3% bigger due to the new change in its growth calculations.
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Saturday, April 27, 2013
U.S. Government Manipulated Economic Statistics / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Peter_Schiff
Don Draper, Mad Men's master advertiser likes to say "when you don't like what they are saying, change the conversation." When it comes to the current economic weakness, which was confirmed again today by the release of lower than expected GDP data, Washington would love do just that. Fortunately for them, they consistently outdo the master minds of Madison Avenue when it comes to misdirection. If the government doesn't like what people are saying, they don't bother just to change the conversation, they change the meaning of the words.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Discerning the Value of Economic Information / Economics / Economic Statistics
By: David_Galland
It has become tradition at La Estancia de Cafayate for Casey Research to host an intimate conference in conjunction with the Harvest Celebration. In the most recent of the series, Bill Bonner, editor of the Diary of a Rogue Economist and a friend of long standing, kicked the program off with a thought-provoking discussion about the nature of information.
With a nod to Nietzsche, Bill dissected the nature of information into two categories.
The first sort is that which is derived from direct observation. For an example, Bill pointed to the tangible information that comes from living in a tribal village. As a member of the tribe, you knew your neighbors, you knew what sort of crops would grow in the different seasons, where and when to hunt, etc.
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Saturday, December 29, 2012
Surmounting Government Confiscatory Policies & Bogus Official Economic Data / Economics / Economic Statistics
By: DeepCaster_LLC
January, 2013
“As the miscreants in Washington negotiate solutions to the [various –Ed.] crises, trial balloons have been floated that agreement has been reached to use a new CPI measure—the C-CPI-U, which tends to understate inflation even more than the CPI-U—as way of deceptively reducing cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security, etc. Not too surprisingly, public reaction appears to be turning increasingly negative, as the concept gets broader exposure in the popular press.
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Monday, December 10, 2012
Real U.S. Unemployment Rate is 22.9% / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) calls the government’s latest jobs and unemployment reports “nonsense numbers.”
There are a number of ongoing problems with the released numbers. For example, the concurrent-seasonal factor adjustments are unstable. The birth-death model adds non-existent jobs each month that are then taken out in the annual downward benchmark revisions. Williams calculates that the job overstatement through November averages 45,000 monthly. In other words, employment gains during 2012 have been overstated by about 500,000 jobs. Another problem is that each month’s jobs number is boosted by downside revision of the previous month’s jobs number. Williams reports that the 146,000 new jobs reported for November “was after a significant downside revision to October’s reporting. Net of prior-period revisions, November’s seasonally-adjusted monthly gain was 97,000.”
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Monday, October 15, 2012
BLS Keeping Up Statistical Appearances / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Last week, supporters of the current administration rejoiced over job numbers released by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS). For the first time since the administration came to power, the official unemployment number fell below 8%. Keynesian cheerleaders all claimed the numbers meant we are surely on the road to economic recovery, just in time for Christmas, and also, the election. Others saw through this ruse.
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Saturday, October 13, 2012
Figures Lie, Liars Figure, the Math of Mainstream Economists / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Bill_Bonner
We also have a way to vastly increase US household income – the feds have only to spend more money! Just add zeros. How about that? The poor family has not a dime more in real, spendable income…but we’ve managed – by clever use of mathematics and economics – to double its income.
But that illustrates the nature of modern economics. It is all numbers…and none of them mean anything. And none means less than the zero.
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Thursday, October 11, 2012
Cooked or Accurate US Employment Numbers? / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Stephen_Lendman
For over a decade, US job prospects have been dismal. Since crisis conditions erupted in 2008, they've been dire for millions wanting work.
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
They Cook the Books, You Can't Trust Official Statistics / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Lewrockwell
Jack D. Douglas writes: All official, statist statistics are only about the subjects and categories, and use only operational definitions and procedures to construct those statistics, which are determined ultimately by the politicians who control the state. All official statistics are, thus, inherently biased by the powerful individuals who run the states, so official stats. vary wildly among nation-states and other political groups. In America, for example, there are massive official stats. on the deaths the state categorizes as due to drug uses defined by the state as "illegal," almost entirely those of poorer people.
Sunday, September 09, 2012
Governments Spinning Bad Economic News Into Good / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
Friday’s payroll jobs report says that 96,000 new jobs were created in August and that the unemployment rate (U.3) fell from 8.3% to 8.1%. As 96,000 new jobs are not enough to keep up with population growth, the decline in the U.3 unemployment rate was caused by 368,000 discouraged job seekers giving up on finding employment and dropping out of the work force as measured by U.3. Discouraged workers are not included in the U.3 measure of unemployment, which makes the measure useless. The only purpose of U.3 is to keep bad news out of the news. the U.3 unemployment rate only measures those who have not been discouraged by the inability to find a job and are still actively seeking employment.
Sunday, September 09, 2012
How Down Economic Statistics Can Be Up if You Make the Rules, QE3? / Economics / Economic Statistics
By: John_Mauldin
"In the financial markets, the current economic cycle is still often viewed as if it is comparable to the far shorter cycles we have experienced since World War II. If that was indeed the case, the solution would be to implement fiscal and monetary stimuli now until lending to the private sector and thereby growth rise substantially. However, what is being overlooked is that the total debt/GDP ratio has risen so sharply over the past 75 years that the limit has probably been reached.
Monday, August 06, 2012
GDP Growth Statistical Nonsense, The Unseen Hand / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Alasdair_Macleod
The assessment of economic growth based on Gross Domestic Product is a fallacy, because GDP is merely a measure of the amount of money in an economy. The one thing it does not measure, which is central to economic progress (note progress, not growth), is the level of entrepreneurial activity. This has important implications for the efficacy of government interventions and solutions to the current economic crisis.
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Sunday, August 05, 2012
U.S. Jobs Report: More Lies From “our” Big Brother / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
In his report on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest jobs and unemployment report, statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) writes: “The July employment and unemployment numbers published today, August 3rd, were worthless and likely misleading. . . . Suspecting at one time that the jobs numbers were being rigged against him by his own Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), President Richard M. Nixon proposed a new approach to reporting the numbers. Although the proposed changes never were implemented, several decades later the BLS adopted reporting methods that were somewhat parallel to the late president’s thinking.”
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Saturday, March 24, 2012
A Random Walk Through the Economic Data Minefields / Economics / Economic Statistics
By: John_Mauldin
This Friday finds me sleeping later than I planned … in the lounge at the airport in Stockholm, on my way to Paris. To the great applause of readers all over the world this may be the shortest letter in 12 years. I will write here and on the plane and quit when I land so I can be with friends this evening. No time for exhaustive research, so we will march through random topics that caught my attention this week until it is time to hit the send button. In no particular order, let's jump in.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Juking the Stats: Our Culture of Manipulation / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Ashvin_Pandurangi
A universal strategy of large institutions is the manipulation of their "books & records" in a positive direction - i.e. one suggesting high levels of current performance and future growth. We see this happen time and again across institutions in all sectors of developed societies, private and public. Large corporations, for example, extensively use off balance sheet vehicles riddled with leveraged products to hide their exposure to risk, or various other accounting tricks to over-state their revenues/profits and under-state their costs/liabilities.
Monday, March 05, 2012
U.S. Recession Explanations, Does the ECRI Believe Its Own Economic Indicators? / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Mike_Shedlock
Late last month in ECRI Sticks with Recession Call on CNBC; More than a Bit of an Exaggeration by Achuthan to Make His Call? I questioned the ECRI's use of coincident indicators to make a claim regarding recession
I count three instances between 1990 and 2000 where ECRI coincident indicators flagged a recession by the methodology Achuthan cited.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, February 06, 2012
US Unemployment Hits 22.5% in Alternate Estimate / Economics / Economic Statistics
By: Jesse
Perhaps this chart will help explain the divergence that Charles Biderman of Trimtabs sees between the official unemployment numbers and the income tax data he has been tracking.
The difference amongst the three measures revolves around the treatment of workers who desire a real full time job, but have to either settle for a part time position and other forms of under-employment that may technically qualify as a 'job' but not as a 'living,' or who have simply been removed from the government's official attention span.
Monday, February 06, 2012
U.S. Fraudulent Election Year Unemployment Data, Lies, Lies, More and Bigger Lies / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: LewRockwell
Economic Collapse writes: On Friday, the entire financial world celebrated when it was announced that the unemployment rate in the United States had fallen to 8.3 percent. That is the lowest it has been since February 2009, and it came as an unexpected surprise for financial markets that are hungry for some good news. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nonfarm payrolls jumped by 243,000 during the month of January. You can read the full employment report right here.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
The GDP Growth Deception, Central Bank Manipulated Fake Economic Statistics / Economics / Economic Statistics
By: Barry_M_Ferguson
As 2012 begins, investors need to know the true health of the US economy. A major barometer is the Gross Domestic Product figure. The US economy generates nearly $14.5 trillion dollars annually in Gross Domestic Product or GDP. This is a measure of economic output. When GDP is expanding, we feel good about the economy, our jobs, and our investments. When GDP is contracting, we feel bad about the economy, our jobs, and our investments. Therefore, it is imperative for central bankers and political regimes to foster ever expanding GDP numbers. A happy populace is less likely to revolt and demand new leadership. In our modern information age, everyone knows about the current GDP number. Expansion is good and the economy is growing. Contraction is bad and the economy is in a recession. Thank goodness the GDP number can be rather malleable. And, like everything else in the new era, it can be faked.