{"id":18878,"date":"2016-03-15T11:19:28","date_gmt":"2016-03-15T16:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18878"},"modified":"2016-03-15T11:19:28","modified_gmt":"2016-03-15T16:19:28","slug":"lies-damn-lies-and-european-growth-statistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18878","title":{"rendered":"Lies, Damn Lies, and European Growth Statistics"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lies, Damn Lies, and European Growth Statistics<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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ATHENS \u2013 \u201cGreece has at last returned to economic growth.\u201d That was the official European Union storyline at the end of 2014. Alas, Greek voters, unimpressed by this rejoicing, ousted the incumbent government and, in January 2015, voted for a new administration in which I served as finance minister.<\/p>\n

Last week, similarly celebratory reports emanated from Brussels heralding the \u201creturn to growth\u201d in Cyprus, and contrasting this piece of \u201cgood\u201d news to Greece\u2019s \u201creturn to recession.\u201d The message from the troika of European bailout lenders \u2013 the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund \u2013 is loud and clear: \u201cDo as we say, like Cyprus has done, and you will recover. Resist our policies, by electing people like Varoufakis, and you will suffer the consequences of further recession.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a powerful story. Except that it is built on a disingenuous lie. Greece was\u00a0not<\/i>\u00a0recovering in 2014, and Cyprus\u2019s national income has\u00a0not<\/i>\u00a0recovered yet. The EU\u2019s claims to the contrary are based on an inappropriate focus on \u201creal\u201d national income, a metric bound to mislead during periods of falling prices.<\/p>\n

If asked whether you are better off today compared to a year ago, you would answer in the affirmative if your money income (that is, its dollar, pound, euro, or yen value) rose during the previous 12 months. In the inflationary times of yore, you might have also accompanied your response with the (reasonable) complaint that increases in the cost of living eroded your increased money income.<\/p>\n

To account for this gap between your money income and your capacity to buy things with it, economists focused on your purchasing power by adjusting your money income for average prices.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lies, Damn Lies, and European Growth Statistics ATHENS \u2013 \u201cGreece has at last returned to economic growth.\u201d That was the official European Union storyline at the end of 2014. Alas, Greek voters, unimpressed by this rejoicing, ousted the incumbent government and, in January 2015, voted for a new administration in which I served as finance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2015,2016,233,279,281,282,284,12966,2864,8402,655,2921],"class_list":["post-18878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bailout","tag-cyprus","tag-ecb","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european-central-bank","tag-european-union","tag-growth-statistics","tag-lies","tag-project-syndicate","tag-propaganda","tag-yanis-varoufakis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18879,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18878\/revisions\/18879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}