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l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 OBAMA'S PHONY RECOVERY
By DICK MORRIS
Published on
TheHill.com on February 14, 2012
President Obama, faced with no recovery from the recession as he enters an
election year, has come up with a handy political gimmick: Fake the
statistics.
The economic data that portend recovery are totally and completely
inventions of Obama's political operation. The reality is that no recovery
is taking place!
Economist James Fitzgibbon, of the Highlander Fund, explains how cooked the
economic statistics on which the president bases his claims of recovery
really are. Begin with "gains" in the stock market.
Fitzgibbon explains that they are no indication of changes in the public
mood because the public isn't doing the investing anymore. He notes that HFT
(high frequency trade computers) now "account for 80 percent [of the market
's] daily business.
No one else is left because they lost their money in 2008 and the public has
fled the market ... Total NYSE volume is 67 percent lower on average than
in 2008. Volume is 29 percent lower this year compared to 2011. The prices [
have] no serious meaning."
Have consumers, as alleged, started borrowing again? Not really. Fitzgibbon
explains that "credit use has surged only because the Obama administration
changed the student loan program to a direct program and those loans are now
counted as part of this metric. It is not comparable to anything prior to
2011." And, he adds ominously, "massive credit card use as measured against
actual verifiable sales shows the increase is in borrowed funds to pay for
food! Not my idea of a healthy sign."
How about lower unemployment figures? Fitzgibbon says they are a "joke." He
says that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has "completely changed the ...
metrics as of January 2012. None of the current percentages are relatable to
anything prior to 2012!" He points out that the January unemployment data
are heavily adjusted for "seasonal variations." He notes that "the actual
data [show that the economy] lost 2.7 million jobs in January." And that's
just the numerator. For the denominator -- the number of people in the
workforce -- the data "also shows about 1.2 million people magically left
the workforce." He says one has to go back to the early 1980s to see labor
force participation as low as it is now.
Auto sales? He says "auto sales are when the manufacturer dumps cars and
trucks on a dealer. Inventory stuffing! It has no relationship to actual
sales to a consumer. Thanks to Obama, GM dealers are drowning in product no
one wants to buy. It is a meaningless data point. Only dealer-to-consumer
data is useful. It is not showing any growth at all."
Housing? He says positive news in this sector is unreliable. "The raw data
we get shows it is worse than last year and in some regions [the] worst ever
since the '60s."
So it appears that Obama's reelection strategy hinges on asking people to
believe the data he puts before them rather than the evidence of their own
eyes. It won't work.
Any economic recovery is only publicly noticed eight to 12 quarters after it
has taken place. Ask George H.W. Bush, who lost the 1992 election despite
very positive economic news at the end of his term. Or ask Clinton, who lost
Congress despite two years of favorable job-creation numbers. It takes
awhile for the good economic news to sink in. And, when there is no good
news, just faked government propaganda, it takes even longer to sink in!
People will understand that Obama's data are a lie. The economy is not some
abstract issue. Real people do not depend on changes in the unemployment-
rate data to gauge their mood. They are more interested in whether they can
get good jobs themselves. Obama's attempt to rig the statistics won't work.
Indeed, it is a pathetic attempt. |
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