It was in May of 2013 that I first highlighted some accounting changes which had taken place at the United States Department of Commerce. Among other changes, they had begun the practice of adding intellectual property as a product to be included in calculations of or Gross Domestic Product. Laughable as this was, and even given the fact that this particular inventory item can be manipulated to be anything a President with suddenly sinking approval numbers wants or needs it to be, such accounting changes will one day be one year old. In the retail industry, that’s what we called, “around the horn.” Let’s explore that concept in a little more detail.
When you manage a store for a company, there is a weekly report of sales numbers. Those numbers are usually compared with the exact same week from the previous year. If you sales are more than last year, the people who sit in Executive Offices are usually happy. If those sales numbers are lower, they’ll be unhappy. Unhappy executives will seek to understand the source of their frowning state, and will also want to know what you, as the store manager are doing about it, (turning their frown upside down.) Some phone calls will ensue. Executive managers will call regional managers who will call district managers who will call store managers. The first question is invariably, “Why!?” Sometimes, the answer will be, a new store or shopping mall just opened up in my neighborhood. They’ll demand to know exactly how far, where, what roads must be traversed, are there tunnels, bridges, mountains, etc. The date of the opening will be written in a book somewhere, and When that date passes next year, God help you if you’re still down in sales. The boss’ answer will be, you are around the horn, and your excuse is no longer going to be accepted.
The same phenomenon also happens the other way. Somehow, the guys at the top always seem to know when competition closes, a new road opens, or some event has taken place to help you look good. Then the refrain becomes, we’ll see if your numbers are as good when we come around the horn on this thing. So, what do you think, “around the horn,” means for the Obama Administration?
The first quarter’s growth in GDP after the horn was rounded on those previously mentioned accounting changes came in at an eye popping .1%. Not only does this represent an annualized figure, but according to statements made by Fed Chief Janet Yellen today, it also includes an adjustment to core inflation, fudged specifically for the purpose of being able to claim that staggering economic expansion, rather than a contraction. We got this news last week one day prior to a bizarre claim made by the Department of Labor that their reports showed another 277,000 jobs were added to the economy by American businesses. The more astute among you might very well say, as much to yourselves as those listening in, “those two reports from the differing arms of our federal behemoth do not jibe with each other,” and you’d be correct. As it turns out, a fudge factor was used by the Department of Labor, because it was April, and apparently April is national tell-me-a-fairy-story month.
For those who don’t know, the unemployment top number is not exactly an exact science. It is figured by the Census Bureau sending out and analyzing the answers to two differing questionnaires. One is sent to about 25,000 American Households each month, and the other involves responses from about 160,000 American businesses. The Institutional Survey, sent to the latter, is run past the statisticians and accountants who then figure how many new jobs were added by businesses, and how many jobs were eliminated. So, paying attention to the usage of new jobs, and net new jobs is important as well. Then the Household Survey is run through the same process to guess how many of our Citizens were actually hired to fill those or other positions and how many lost their jobs. In April of this year, our government reported to us that American Businesses added 277,000 jobs and that 838,000 fewer Americans are working to fulfill those net jobs added. This bizarre reporting of statistics is not new, not an anomaly, but has been pretty much standard fare for close to two years now. Just to drive the point home, April’s anomaly represents a disparity of 1.1 Million people involved in a statistical impossibility, and that same statistical impossibility has been happening unbroken since July of 2012. So now my fellow inhabitants of the current worker’s paradise and formerly free nation known as the people’s republic of America, the question is, do you think that there may be some chicanery involved with how these figures are reported to us?
I am not certain which astounds me more, the fact that the current Administration must obviously believe that they can continue this lie for ever, and no one will catch wise, or if it is how completely incurious the alphabet media seems to be that they are still reporting these numbers without circus music playing in the background. O.K., forget the circus music, at least question the validity once in a while, especially when the lie is so gosh darned obvious.
Thank goodness for Fox News, who at least pressed for some sort of explanation, and didn’t just accept the baloney like the trained zombies at other news outlets. They at least got some sort of an explanation from the White House concerning our suddenly near zero GDP growth. That explanation was that it was cold during the winter months, (which apparently according to the White House has never ever happened before in U.S. history.) So, maybe the answer is that we actually need global warming to be real, and we need it to start working now, or we’ll all starve. Don’t worry my fellow future inhabitants of the reeducation camps, November of 2016 is only 30 short months away. I just hope we don’t do something stupid again, like electing Hillary Clinton to be our 45th President.
