3 ms·

The manipulation of government-published data is not specific to Democrats or Republicans, and seems to be getting more and more shameless: 1. "Seasonal adjust

by jazzyk 11y ago

The manipulation of government-published data is not specific to Democrats or Republicans, and seems to be getting more and more shameless: 1. "Seasonal adjustment". This year, the 1st quarter GDP had to be 'seasonally adjusted' TWICE to finally show (meager) positive growth, instead of initially reported contraction. 2. The inflation rate used by the government to calculate the GDP is unrealistically low. It is debatable how much higher real inflation is, but most independent ( and supported by numbers) analyses I have seen typically estimate inflation rate to be at least 3-4 percent higher than the one reported. If the real inflation rate were to be used to calculate the GDP, there would be no or negative growth. 3. In 70% or 80% of cases, the initial, headline-grabbing news are later revised lower and published quietly (usually Fri afternoon) http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/30/us-government-revises-earlier-gdps-to-fix-anomalies-in-reporting.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/30/us-government-revises-earlier... TL;DR: We need non-government, independent economic agencies to calculate vital economic growth indicators.

Symmetry 11y ago
Speaking of official versus independantly measured inflation data, the CPI is actually matching up with the Billion Prices Project pretty well. http://bpp.mit.edu/usa/ http://bpp.mit.edu/usa/ I'm not sure why you think seasonal adjustment is such a big deal since the pluses and minuses are conserved - it can't have any effect on year over year GDP figures.
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
Absolutely. The present band of Market Monetarists heretics think an "official" NDGP futures market would be a move in this direction. But one side effect of this is that inflation* as a regulatory concept becomes much more deprecated. That's a big change. It is not clear to me that there is any inflation at all, but I tend to avoid trendy goods and I don't live ( by design ) in high-rent areas. *even though RGDP+inflation=NGDP. My bias in this is that RGDP & inflation look like an unstable control input where NGDP does not ( I believe this is because of lag ) . "Should control theory be applied to the economy at all" is a very good question.

by jazzyk 11y ago

Symmetry 11y ago

Speaking of official versus independantly measured inflation data, the CPI is actually matching up with the Billion Prices Project pretty well. http://bpp.mit.edu/usa/ http://bpp.mit.edu/usa/ I'm not sure why you think seasonal adjustment is such a big deal since the pluses and minuses are conserved - it can't have any effect on year over year GDP figures.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago

Absolutely. The present band of Market Monetarists heretics think an "official" NDGP futures market would be a move in this direction. But one side effect of this is that inflation* as a regulatory concept becomes much more deprecated. That's a big change. It is not clear to me that there is any inflation at all, but I tend to avoid trendy goods and I don't live ( by design ) in high-rent areas. *even though RGDP+inflation=NGDP. My bias in this is that RGDP & inflation look like an unstable control input where NGDP does not ( I believe this is because of lag ) . "Should control theory be applied to the economy at all" is a very good question.