{"id":3529,"date":"2014-12-25T07:52:09","date_gmt":"2014-12-25T12:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=3529"},"modified":"2014-12-25T07:52:09","modified_gmt":"2014-12-25T12:52:09","slug":"you-thought-the-saudis-were-kidding-the-automatic-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=3529","title":{"rendered":"You Thought The Saudis Were Kidding? – The Automatic Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

You Thought The Saudis Were Kidding? – The Automatic Earth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are many things I don\u2019t understand these days, and some are undoubtedly due to the limits of my brain power. But at the same time some are not. I\u2019m the kind of person who can no longer believe that anyone would get excited over a 5% American GDP growth number. Not even with any other details thrown in, just simply a print like that. It\u2019s so completely out of left field and out of proportion that you would think by now at least a few more people understand what\u2019s really going on.<\/p>\n

And Tyler Durden breaks it down well enough in\u00a0Here Is The Reason For The \u201cSurge\u201d In Q3 GDP<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(delayed health-care spending stats make up for 2\/3 of the 5%), but still. I would have hoped that more Americans had clued in to the nonsense that has been behind such numbers for many years now. The US has been buying whatever growth politicians can squeeze out of the data and their manipulation, for many years. The entire world has.<\/p>\n

The 5% stat is portrayed as being due to increased consumer spending. But most of that is health-care related. And economies don\u2019t grow because people increase spending on not being sick and\/or miserable. That\u2019s just an accounting trick. The economy doesn\u2019t get better if we all drive our cars into a tree, even if GDP numbers would say otherwise.<\/p>\n

All the MSM headlines about consumer confidence and comfort and all that, it doesn\u2019t square with the 43 million US citizens condemned to living on food stamps. I remember Halloween spending (I know, that\u2019s Q4) was down an atrocious -11%, but the Q3 GDP print was +5%? Why would anyone volunteer to believe that? Do they all feel so bad any sliver of \u2018good news\u2019 helps? Are we really that desperate?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You Thought The Saudis Were Kidding? – The Automatic Earth. There are many things I don\u2019t understand these days, and some are undoubtedly due to the limits of my brain power. But at the same time some are not. I\u2019m the kind of person who can no longer believe that anyone would get excited over […]<\/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":[2,3],"tags":[1752,2149,353,1775,701],"class_list":["post-3529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","tag-economic-contraction","tag-economic-decline","tag-gdp","tag-oil-price-collapse","tag-saudi-arabia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3529","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=3529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3530,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3529\/revisions\/3530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}