John Williams - The man who debunks the government's groovy economic numbers

[truedelphi]

Yesterday, I was startled to realize my favorite brand of ice cream was not on sale and was the same price it had been a full year ago.

But when I pulled the container out of the grocery freezer locker, I realized why - the darn carton was a good 25% smaller than it had been a year ago.

Doesn't anyone in Washington get this? And why do they keep saying it is all so much better these days?

Well, here is John Williams, an economist from the San Francisco Bay Area that can explain much of this. I will post the key paragraphs to offer you the flavor of this Alternet article:

Soon, John Williams said, he began to realize that there were a number of problems in how the government measured the economy — and that he wasn't alone. He conducted surveys of his colleagues in the National Association of Business Economists, and what he found dismayed him. "What I found in my surveys of the quality of government statistics was that most economists realized they were seriously flawed," he said. "I mean like 70 percent."

Worse, he claims that the more his colleagues knew what they were doing, the less faith they had in the government's data. "The first time I did the survey, I had the chief economist for a major retail organization filling it out," Williams said. "And he said, 'You know, I think the retail reports are worthless. I just don't look at it. But they think the money supply is a good one.' A second economist said 'Oh, the money supply is horrible.' What I found is the people who really understood the numbers they were working with thought there were serious problems."

This hasn't always been the case, Williams claims; we had a better picture of the economy back in the 1970s, for example. But over time and incrementally, government officials changed the methodology of measuring key economic indicators, painting an ever rosier picture of the economy, which just happened to benefit the incumbent politicians who ran the government. Or as he said in his calm, bland timbre, "Over time there has been a series of methodological shifts in the numbers to tend to create an upside bias in employment and downside in bias in inflation."

Whole article can be read here - http://www.alternet.org/economy/146784/meet_the_economist_who_says_the_government%27s_economic_numbers_are_lies/?page=entire

[DJ13]

1. K&R

[bemildred]

2. They've been lying their asses off for a long, long time. nt

[The Northerner]

3. K&R

[nilram]

4. K&R

[New Dawn]

5. K&R