The Stimulus Seems to have failed

Kthulhut Fhtagn said:
The question seems to be that you're only now taking issue with the means of calculating GDP growth, whereas you used the official GDP to defend presidents/policies you were in favor of in past threads. Take, for instance, an argument you commonly bring up in threads on socialized medicine. You frequently assert the superiority of the US healthcare system based on the per capita GDP of the US as opposed to nations with socialized medicine. Are you now, in the face of your beliefs in the flaws of measuring the GDP*, willing to state that this argument of yours is unproven until the GDP of the US and those nations with socialized medicine are recalculated?

If not, it certainly does seem that you're willing to use whatever measurement of GDP is the most convenient for you at the time.

* It'd be prudent to note that you've suggested no alternatives for measuring the GDP.
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This here.
Thanks...saved me some typing!
:)
 
Kthulhut Fhtagn said:
The question seems to be that you're only now taking issue with the means of calculating GDP growth, whereas you used the official GDP to defend presidents/policies you were in favor of in past threads.
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Like I said, I wasn't aware that they'd changed the inflation rate calculation and how that affected GDP estimates until now. Did you post anything about that earlier?
 
BeAChooser said:
Like I said, I wasn't aware that they'd changed the inflation rate calculation and how that affected GDP estimates until now. Did you post anything about that earlier?
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From time to time I post a link to shadowstats.com. You likely can't go wrong just getting numbers from there, because Williams posts his corrected number right on top of the government data series. With a paid subscription you can download all of them in excel formats.

Since we are probably going to see even more distortion in reporting, the government numbers may be expected to get more distanced from reality, instead of closer to reality.

Pretty common situation when governments begin to feel economic stress.
 
mhaze said:
From time to time I post a link to shadowstats.com.
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Which is pretty much an economic woo site. Current methodology is the best available and selectively evoking an older methodology then selectively comparing it to a different methodology is more than a little dishonest.

For any serious analysis stick to the accepted numbers rather than inventing your own or going to a woo site.
 
lomiller said:
Which is pretty much an economic woo site. Current methodology is the best available and selectively evoking an older methodology then selectively comparing it to a different methodology is more than a little dishonest. ....
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That's half right, shadowstats does study the woo in government delivered economics. For example, the fact that government changed a methodology midstream, then presents to us a single data set, without explaining about the change in methodology.

Shadowstats provides the (above mentioned) questionable government data series, then shows how it would look if by a consistent methodology.

People in Argentina would have benefited from a Shadowstats.com service when their government started lying about all the numbers, prior to seizing the pensions, restricting cash flows out of the country, and devaluing the currency repeatedly.
 
mhaze said:
That's half right, shadowstats does study the woo in government delivered economics.
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Your woo site like to present methodologies that economists have rejected as flawed. It’s woo plain and simple. The fact that it agrees with your ideology doesn’t change the fact it’s woo. The fact that you will gobble whatever woo fits your ideological beliefs, does tell us a great deal about you, however.
 
lomiller said:
Your woo site like to present methodologies that economists have rejected as flawed. It’s woo plain and simple. The fact that it agrees with your ideology doesn’t change the fact it’s woo. The fact that you will gobble whatever woo fits your ideological beliefs, does tell us a great deal about you, however.
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LOL! Looks like lomiller is hiding. From history, perhaps? :cool:
 
BeAChooser said:
LOL! Looks like lomiller is hiding. From history, perhaps? :cool:
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Likely, or just talking to be talking.

But he also may just not be aware of how many of the things you see these days originate with John Williams. I don't always agree with his conclusions, but his data sets are highly valuable.

This subject was entered into...I think it was Francisca and Puppycow a year or two ago alleging something like "woo" on shadowstats, but they didn't use that term. I asked for evidence for the claim, and they had nothing.

So Lomiller might want to quit this one now, he ain't going to get anywhere with the claim. He may think it's some kind of arm of the nasty evil Repubs or the Great Satan Exxon or something.

The funny thing is, someone corrects in a straightforward manner the lies from the government, then they get criticized for it? What a joke.

:)

PS: Another thing worth looking at is the "Billion Price Index" by I think MIT.
 
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http://townhall.com/columnists/mich.../obamas_egghead_economic_saboteurs/page/full/

Official motto of the White House economic team: Those who can, do. Those who can't, fantasize in the classroom, fail in Washington and then return to the Ivy Tower to train the next generation of egghead economic saboteurs. Life is good for left-wing academics. Everyone else pays dearly.
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Pretty accurate description, I'd say. And the rest of the article shows how that applies to Austan Goolsbee, Christina Romer, Jared Bernstein, Peter Orszag, Larry Summers, and Alan Krueger. Every last one of them a socialist ideologue. Every last one of them made matters worse. Every last one of them gone back to their ivory tower.

And as the article concludes ...

the economic team is "exhausted." Apparently, Obama is tired of hearing from them, too. The Hill newspaper reports that he has stopped receiving daily economic briefings that were once treated with the same emergency status as national security briefings. So, the central planners continue to be paid to fail -- while their boss looks the other way at the destruction, whistling into what he calls America's temporary "head winds."
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What a sad and predictable state of affairs. Because democrats/progressives/socialists NEVER learn.

:D
 
BeAChooser said:
Like I said, I wasn't aware that they'd changed the inflation rate calculation and how that affected GDP estimates until now. Did you post anything about that earlier?
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Um.
As far as I can see they haven't changed the GDP deflater calculation.
GDP deflater has been around for quite some time in the US and the UK.

In other words, you're only now picking on the data since someone you don't like is in charge...you didn't pick on the data, calculated in the same way, prior to this.
 
Tolls said:
Um.
As far as I can see they haven't changed the GDP deflater calculation.
GDP deflater has been around for quite some time in the US and the UK.

In other words, you're only now picking on the data since someone you don't like is in charge...you didn't pick on the data, calculated in the same way, prior to this.
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Over what time period do you make this assertion?
 
mhaze said:
Over what time period do you make this assertion?
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I didn't bother going beyond about a decade.
Couldn't spot any mention of significant changes to how they work it out.

All I need is a decade...blimey, all I need is 4 years.
 
Tolls said:
I didn't bother going beyond about a decade.
Couldn't spot any mention of significant changes to how they work it out.

All I need is a decade...blimey, all I need is 4 years.
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I was referring to the 1992 change in the CPI by Clinton, but there have of course been others.
 
CPI is irrelevant.
The GDP Deflater doesn't use that as far as I'm aware, hence the difference between CPI and the deflator. They are not the same beast.
 
mhaze said:
Likely, or just talking to be talking.

But he also may just not be aware of how many of the things you see these days originate with John Williams. I don't always agree with his conclusions, but his data sets are highly valuable.

This subject was entered into...I think it was Francisca and Puppycow a year or two ago alleging something like "woo" on shadowstats, but they didn't use that term. I asked for evidence for the claim, and they had nothing.
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We're talking about the same guy here who is claiming the US government is deliberately falsifying economic statistics for political and financial gain while freely admitting he has no evidence of any number of alleged misdeeds. And I quote

The second kind of alleged manipulation is more sinister. "It's where a number is changed for specific political or financial market needs," Williams said.

Williams said both Democratic and Republican administrations have carried out such trickery, citing supposed examples going back to President Lyndon Johnson.

He accused the current Bush administration of taking advantage of a switch to monthly instead of semiannual seasonal adjustment of job creation data to "bring the number in where they want it," though he admitted he had no evidence.
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Source

Yeah, that's not woo at all. :rolleyes:
 
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Tolls said:
CPI is irrelevant.
The GDP Deflater doesn't use that as far as I'm aware, hence the difference between CPI and the deflator. They are not the same beast.
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I agree, they are not the same.

But both the CPI and the GDP Deflator, when produced by the same people that want to justify taking trillions of dollars of our money, should not be considered trustworthy.


http://www.shadowstats.com/article/flash-update-79
The fourth-quarter GDP inflation rate (GDP deflator) revised minimally to 0.61% from 0.51%, accounting for the minor downward revision to the real GDP change. The nominal (not-adjusted-for-inflation) GDP, was unrevised in aggregate. The "advance" fourth-quarter deflator estimate was a 0.26% contraction, versus an indicated annualized third-quarter inflation rate of 3.88%.
Based on earlier reporting methodologies and removal of some reporting gimmicks, the SGS-Alternate GDP estimate for the fourth quarter remains an annual (not annualized) contraction of roughly 4.1% versus a 3.3% contraction in the third quarter, against official respective estimates of a 0.8% decline and 0.7% gain. Against reporting of underlying economic series, the annualized quarterly contraction likely was in excess of 7% for the fourth quarter, but the latest revised 6.3% estimate remains the closest to reality reported by the BEA in a long time. Nonetheless, GDP reporting remains virtually worthless and is little more than political propaganda.
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Oh right...woo.
Forgive me for thinking you had some evidence.

Again, as far as I can see the methodologies behind the deflator in both the US and the UK are the same and have been for long enough to show up BeAChoosers complaining about it now as mere partisanship (which is no great surprise, it has to be said).
 
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