Sunday, January 31, 2010

The lying continues

Several funnies have emerged on the scene the latest couple of days, one more deceitful then the other. And as usual mainstream media refuse to do any sort of investigating work or question anything from the powers that be.

The U.S. economy grew in the fourth quarter of 2009, with 5.7%, at the fastest pace in six years, or so they say. Most within media only report this as another sign of better times ahead, but is it really?

Even mainstream economists and business owners in the US remains unconvinced that a full-scale recovery is underway or that substantial job growth would soon follow. A couple of papers have reported on this with quotations from economists believe that most of the fourth-quarter growth was driven by temporary factors like cyclical inventory changes and government stimulus that are likely to fade in the middle of this year.

For the elitists agenda the key question for the U.S. economy, seen to GDP, is the consumer and government. Consumer spending, which alone accounts for about 70% of U.S. economic activity, is the main target to keep fictive GDP-numbers up and sustain what cornflake economists call a solid recovery. Government on the other hand can also contribute through lots of spending, no matter on what which is seen on US military numbers, the only factor to consider is spending so GDP is going up.

But how do you keep consumer spending up when the American people are in-debt like never before, official unemployment is 10% (in reality close to 20%) and the number of producing hours is going down? Well, you can’t, not in the long run. However, excluding autos, consumer spending increased at a 3 percent rate last quarter, the most in three years, indicating the biggest part of the economy was gaining speed. But why? When things look so dire, people really don’t have money, how come they are still spending?

Well, that magic has several ingredients.

Firstly zero interest rates which make it very cheap to borrow and spend.

Secondly an increase in the money supply which make certain parts of the economy to throw notes around.

And thirdly; it all depends on how you count. You see the third-quarter GDP was revised from 3.5 percent (huge “green shoot” in its day) initially to 2.8 percent but it eventually landed at 2.2 percent. Can you say ‘scam’? There’s no reason to think that this will not be done for the fourth quarter.

And looking at the real numbers this potential revised level seems very feasible since the domestic purchases deflator rose 2.1% while the GDP deflator rose 0.6%, meaning that terms of trade adjusted GDP rose 4.2%, not 5.7%. And the very optimistic trade-deficit number also seems to be almost deliberately increased.
But it doesn’t stop there either. As much as 3.4% was because of reduced inventory reductions. Which means that it is a temporarily gain short-term, but may very well impact negatively long-term.

Can’t I see anything bright about this? Of course I can, and if everything else was okay I would even agree with our mainstream soul-killers that things are looking better, but as one of those people using my brain I cannot help considering in factors like a defaulting commercial real-estate and the trillions of borrowing and even more trillions of printing. Well, there are a lot of things about the US economy that points towards total break-down and a huge depression so some GDP numbers that most likely is both exaggerated and comes from temporarily gains shouldn’t rock any yacht.

In addition GDP doesn’t tell us what the real wealth creation level is, GDP only tells us about activity within the economy, any kind of activity. If they, oh let’s say shuffle sand out on sandy beaches, re-build bridges that don’t need re-building, throw lots of cash at the useless manmade global warming scam, spends lots and lots of money on the military and similar ineffectual and expensive hoaxes, well then GDP goes up.

Yet another lie to get you to get another loan and spend your last savings.

No comments:

Post a Comment