LIES, DAMN LIES, & BLS STATISTICS

“There are three types of lies — lies, damn lies, and statistics.” ― Benjamin Disraeli

It’s my favorite day of the month. The Bureau of Lies & Scams issues their double seasonally adjusted, massaged to provide a happy ending, birth death adjusted unemployment propaganda, designed to keep the masses in the dark about their own dire financial circumstances. Even though the equally manipulated GDP is at 1% or below, retail sales are plunging, corporate profits plummeted by 15% in the 4th quarter and Challenger & Grey corporate layoff announcements were up 42% in January versus last year, our fraudulent friends at the BLS announced glorious employment figures this morning.

The Establishment data that gets all the headlines blared that 242,000 net new jobs were created in February. Of course, 129,000 fake birth/death jobs were factored into that number. Anyone with a functioning brain (excludes Wall Street economists, CNBC shills, and any government apparatchik) knows that more businesses have been closing than opening for the last four years as Obamacare and government solutions destroy the economy. Rather than adding 129,000 jobs, small businesses likely subtracted 50,000 jobs in February. That would put the true number at about 60,000.

In a shocking coincidence, Trim Tabs, a privately run independent company that monitors actual real time payroll withholding tax info issued a report two days ago which said the number of new jobs created in February was between 55,000 and 85,000, based on actual withholding tax data. If you are employed, payroll taxes are automatically extracted. This data cannot be manipulated by the government propagandists. It reveals the truth. No seasonal adjustments, tweaks or phantom jobs added. It’s pure tax data.

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The True Cause Of Greece’s Economic Failure——An Omnivorous State, Not Lazy Workers

In the course of the Greek crisis, animosities between creditor countries like Germany and Greece didn’t take long to surface. They were fired up in the tabloid press, which was quick to revive various stereotypes. In Greece, Germans soon found themselves compared to their Nazi predecessors, while German tabloids inter alia complained sotto voce about those allegedly “lazy Southerners”.

 

lazy GreekThe stereotype of “lazy Greeks”

 

This complaint seemed only natural, after all, everybody knows how hard-working Germany’s citizens are compared to the siesta-prone indolent slackers inhabiting assorted Mediterranean shores, right? Not so fast, said economists. OECD studies show that the average Greek worker toils for 2,017 hours per year, the by far highest figure in Europe.

 

siestaMore stereotyping …

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