Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts
The US government continues to lie about everything, not just Russia, Syria, Iran, and China. The US government is incapable of telling the truth about something as straightforward as employment. According to the government, March produced only 98,000 new payroll jobs, an insufficient amount to reduce unemployment, but the unemployment rate fell from 4.7 to 4.5 percent.
How did that happen? Not because the unemployed found jobs. The unemployment rate fell because the government did not count as unemployed large numbers of unemployed people who did not look for a job during the four week period prior to the survey. The US has a low unemployment rate, because the government does not count the unemployed.
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The government knows the reported unemployment rate is wrong, because other data are inconsistent with the low rate. For example, the labor force participation rate consistent with a 4.5% unemployment rate is 67%, whereas the current participation rate is a low 63%, which implies a much higher rate of unemployment than 4.5%.
The 4.5% reported unemployment rate is also inconsistent with the Conference Board help wanted data, which has been in a downward trend since 2010 and shows a March 2017 year over year decline of 17%.
I don’t see the financial press investigating the inconsistencies among the data, asking the government qustions, and providing the public with explanations. John Williams at shadowstats.com does, but the economics profession shows no observable interest.
Just as the government doesn’t measure unemployment, it doesn’t measure inflation. The government has created the myth of a growing real GDP since a recovery was declared in June 2009. However, when the implicit price deflator is adjusted for the government’s understatement of inflation, as John Williams does, real GDP growth has been flat since June 2009.
The government uses fake facts in order to create a fake picture of the economy so that the stock market’s rise is perceived to be real and not the result of Federal Reserve manipulation and corporations using their profits and borrowing money in order to buy back their own stocks. The buy-backs drive up the stock prices and executive “performance bonuses.” Stock prices are higher than can be expained by profits and real retail sales. Indeed, stock prices are so high that one would think there would be massive business investment, but there is very little.
One would think that someone in the financial press would be interested in the many inconsistencies in reported data, just as one would think that reporters would be more interested in the inconsistencies in the government’s stories about Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Russia, China, 9/11, Snowden, Julian Assange, and reformist Latin Amerian heads of state, who Washington always finds reasons to overthrow. But reporters aren’t interested and neither are their editors.
The facts are inconsistent with the propaganda, so the facts are ignored. In the place of facts, we have fake facts that sustain the propaganda. By controlling expanations, the government maintains The Matrix that serves the One Percent and war and is driving the world to destruction.
Wonderful Post by PCR. This is due to writing on subjects for which he has knowledge; which is why he should not write about GloBull Warming.
Sorry PCR, but the Govt is lying much more than you say. They claim 98,000 new jobs, but 670,000 of those new jobs (yes I realize that 98,000 – 670,000 is a BIG negative number) are jobs estimated by the CES Birth-Death model – in other words they made them up. They will drop the claimed numbers some later, but they don’t bother to advertise those changes.
You don’t have an economic problem, you have a parasitic infection. Locusts have descended on America. They control the bank and the corporate media. Six big conglomerates glom all the fake newz. The picture is always good as long as the parasite gets what it wants, and universally bad when it doesn’t. The stores are closing? No problem. The people are starving? No problem. Revolution is brewing and an Angry Giant is awakened. Oh, we have a new Reagan and fake patriotism. When you see the hidden hand, it comes from the Monopoly Money Counterfeiting Cabal.
Yawn… Same shit different day. When was this written? It could have been any day in the past 10 years.
I never believe anything my government tells me , “NOTHING” . And generally I assume the opposite is true . Like the recent Syrian cruise missle attack over some sarin gas attack that some body thinks maybe some Russian built jet might have done it but probably maybe not but well you know it’s like a really bad thing and kids were killed but who knows but it could be