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Fake Growth? Exploring The Big Mystery In Friday’s GDP Report

April 28, 2019

Fake Growth? Exploring The Big Mystery In Friday’s GDP Report

We have become accustomed to the miraculous economic data ‘surprises’ that are propagandized out of China month after month – not too hot, not too cold, but just right – but in the latest US GDP data, as MarketWatch’s Greg Robb investigates, mystery theater comes to American government data…

It is a case that would make Sherlock Holmes proud.

Growth in the first quarter smashed expectations, fueled in part by strong inventory building. According to the government, $32 billion of goods were added to inventories this quarter, or $128 billion annualized.

This stockpiling of goods boosted first-quarter GDP growth by about 70 basis points and helped propel growth to a 3.2% annual rate, well above forecasts.

The problem is that it is not at all obvious where these inventories came from. Goods have to come from somewhere, either produced by domestic firms or imported from abroad.

The mystery is that both production and imports fell in the first three months of the year, according to government data.

“You can’t stockpile what you do not import or do not produce,” said Robert Brusca, chief economist at FAO Economics.

The Fed reported last week that industrial output slipped at a 0.3% annual rate in the first quarter.

And the government’s GDP report estimates that imports fell 3.7% in the first three months of the year.

The one other explanation — that consumption fell sharply enough to leave businesses with unexpected unsold goods — also doesn’t fit the evidence, Brusca said.

Consumption did not fall faster than industrial production or imports to generate any surplus, he said. To be sure, spending on consumer durable goods fell 5.3%, the biggest drop in 10 years. Business spending on equipment was also weak.

“Any way you slice it, this GDP report…is an apparent mess,” he said.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New President–Same BLS Bullshit

January 6, 2018

NEW PRESIDENT – SAME BLS BULLSHIT

I spent most of Obama’s presidency obliterating the jobs recovery narrative every month, as millions supposedly left the workforce because their financial situation was so wonderful. The bullshit shoveled by the BLS was nothing but manipulated misinformation then and it is still bullshit now. Just because the president is now Trump, doesn’t make the false narrative about a strong jobs recovery now valid. After a disappointing December jobs report, the cackling and tooting of horns might die down a little, but the propaganda peddlers will somehow spin it as a positive. Buy Stocks!!!!

Candidate Trump railed against the fake data put out by the BLS. He railed about the ridiculously low interest rates manufactured by the Fed. He declared the stock market was a bubble ready to burst. That was over 5,000 points ago. As expected, now that he is el presidente, Trump embraces the fake data, low interest rates and the most overvalued stock market in history. He tweets about the great economy and stock market every day. GDP has risen at a scintillating 2.5% pace in 2017. This is up from 2% in the prior two years, driven by people going further into debt to survive or buy shit they don’t need.

The narrative being propagated by the corporate MSM was this was the best holiday retail season in years. Americans were back to spending like drunken sailors. Trump is making America great again, so why not spend money we don’t have using that little piece of plastic. Those future tax savings will more than pay the bill. Except for a couple nagging questions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why GDP Is Fake

October 26, 2017

Why GDP Is Fake

Why GDP Is Fake

Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, is the most commonly used measure and ranking of a nation’s economy. According to the OECD and Wikipedia, its definition is: “an aggregate measure of production equal to the sum of the gross values added of all resident and institutional units engaged in production (plus any taxes, and minus any subsidies, on products not included in the value of their outputs).” No subtractions are included in it for debts that were undertaken in order to generate the given “gross values added.” A trillion dollars of increased assets (additional “gross values” of “production”) adds a trillion dollars to GDP, even if all of it was produced by increasing the debts by a trillion dollars: only the assets-side of the balance-sheet is relevant to GDP.

However, wealth is assets minus liabilities; it is assets minus debts; it is not assets alone. Therefore, a nation’s wealth has no necessary relationship at all to a nation’s GDP, because the nation’s wealth is its assets minus its liabilities, not its assets regardless of its liabilities (such as GDP is).

Britannica provides this definition of “GDP”: “Gross domestic product (GDP), total market value of the goods and services produced by a country’s economy during a specified period of time. It includes all final goods and services — that is, those that are produced by the economic agents located in that country regardless of their ownership and that are not resold in any form. It is used throughout the world as the main measure of output and economic activity.” In this definition, too, no subtractions are included in it for the debts. Britannica then goes on to state:

GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + Net Exports

or more succinctly

GDP = C + I + G + NX

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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