» Sunday, 29 June A.D. 2008
lies, damn lies, and...
A couple weeks (months?) ago, I remember talking to Dave about the cost of gold and whether it was subject to inflation. The discussion seemed to hinge on whose numbers you believed, and Dave suggested that the numbers showing gold becoming less valuable over time were based off of government-reported economic data. This data was not to be trusted, as the government was “cooking the books,” as it were. I recoiled at the thought and Dave being, well, Dave, didn't press the issue too much.
Today I stumbled upon Shadow Government Statistics, which explains in concrete terms what Dave was talking about. To wit:
As former Labor Secretary Bob Reich explained in his memoirs, the Clinton administration had found in its public polling that if the government inflated economic reporting, enough people would believe it to swing a close election. Accordingly, whatever integrity had survived in the economic reporting system disappeared during the Clinton years. Unemployment was redefined to eliminate five million discouraged workers and to lower the unemployment rate; methodologies were changed to reduce poverty reporting, to reduce reported CPI inflation, to inflate reported GDP growth, among others.
(To put the unemployment thing into perspective, that's changing the definition of “unemployment rate” to reduce it by roughly 1.5% or more. Puts “It's the economy, stupid,” in perspective, don'tcha think? To be fair, it's not just the Clinton administration, either; the article in question starts with the Kennedy administration and goes on from there...hitting pretty much everybody since.)
If you prefer your discussion in more layman's terms, there's Numbers racket, which some kind soul has reformatted to be more web-friendly.
posted by Nate @ 3:54PM