Economist challenges government data - New England Patriots Forums

***weswelker#83*** · 05-25-2008, 04:52 PM

Numbers *do* lie: Economist John Williams is leading a one-man crusade to expose government economic data as grossly misleading.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...BU6K10JTEF.DTL

otis p. driftwood · 05-25-2008, 05:06 PM

Quote:

illiams said both Democratic and Republican administrations have carried out such trickery, citing supposed examples going back to President Lyndon Johnson.

He accused the current Bush administration of taking advantage of a switch to monthly instead of semiannual seasonal adjustment of job creation data to "bring the number in where they want it," though he admitted he had no evidence.

Bureau officials said they were mystified by accusations that the agency falsifies data. The 2003 shift to monthly seasonal adjustment of jobs data "was recognized statistically as a better way," said Assistant Commissioner Patricia Getz.

In any case, she noted, payroll figures are matched once a year with tax records to produce an accurate tabulation of the number of jobs in the economy.

Williams arrives at his alternative GDP, employment and inflation statistics by reverse-engineering the data, backing out changes made over time. In the same way that every change carried out by the government made the economy look rosier, each of Williams' adjustments makes things appear worse.

So in other words, this guy sits there and forcasts that we're all going to die, but has no proof of it other than "reverse engineering the data"...in other words, he makes it fit his template.

***weswelker#83*** · 05-25-2008, 07:19 PM

Someone said:

Numbers Don't Lie, Liars Use Numbers

otis p. driftwood · 05-25-2008, 07:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by weswelker#83

Someone said:

Numbers Don't Lie, Liars Use Numbers

That's not the quote, wes.

So...are you saying that your boy here you posted the story about is a liar? Is that what you're saying?

***weswelker#83*** · 05-25-2008, 07:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by a.paul

That's not the quote, wes.

So...are you saying that your boy here you posted the story about is a liar? Is that what you're saying?

The government's calculation that unemployment was 5 percent in April and that inflation was 4 percent and economic growth 2 percent over the last year, is fantasy. It might even be disinformation.

Government economic data are "out of touch with common experience. That's why people used to believe the numbers but no longer do," Williams said during an interview in his modest one-bedroom apartment near Lake Merritt.

otis p. driftwood · 05-25-2008, 07:28 PM

Quote:

Steve Landefeld, director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Commerce Department agency that prepares quarterly GDP reports, said in an e-mail that "the bureau rigorously follows guidelines designed to ensure its work remains totally transparent and absolutely unbiased."

Indeed, it's easy to write Williams off as a crank. His views frequently veer toward the conspiratorial. A Fox News interviewer once accused him of being a "grassy knoll theorist."

He criticizes almost all the major changes made in data gathering and analysis in recent decades, most of which had wide support among experts of all political stripes.

"All of those methodological changes were made after academic economists did decades of research and said they should be done," said UC San Diego economist Valerie Ramey, a member of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee.

So you want to say that every other economist in the entire world is wrong and you know for a fact that this guy...this "grassy knoll" guy...is right?

***Patters*** · 05-26-2008, 07:36 AM

The government certainly plays games with numbers, and I suspect it's done that for a long time. As the article, says, the governments numbers don't seem to match our "common experience," namely I think most of us are aware that things are gettng more expensive at a faster rate than the government's inflation rate would suggest.

Also, the guy raises some important specifics:

"For example, over the last 25 years, several technical changes have been made in the way the consumer price index is calculated:

-- In the 1980s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics switched from using house prices to equivalent rental prices in calculating homeowner inflation.

-- About a decade ago, the bureau shifted to a model in which consumers are assumed to switch some of their purchases within narrowly defined categories from items that have gone up in price to other items that have risen less, such as buying round steak instead of porterhouse.

-- The bureau has long adjusted prices for quality improvements. If a product gets better or if useful features are added, its price is adjusted down. Thus, with automobiles, additions such as antilock brakes have sometimes resulted in price decreases in calculating the CPI, even though the actual cost of cars went up. In the late 1980s and 1990s, new quality-adjustment techniques were introduced for a range of products, including washers, dryers and televisions.

Each of these changes has had the effect of reducing the reported inflation rate, according to Williams."