11/09/07
I'd mentioned this in passing before, but now it's time for me to formally offer another round of unsolicited advice to Ron Paul's presidential campaign: Start hammering away — hard — on the relentless manipulation of government economic statistics.
My inspiration for this was last week's McLaughlin Group, which as usual, I didn't catch until today because the truly-worthless Maryland Public Television doesn't carry it and I have to wait nearly a week for the podcast edition. "Issue One!" was the Fed's Halloween rate cut and the economic woes stemming from the credit crunch. Pat Buchanan as usual beat the protectionist drum, Eleanor Clift played the class-warfare card, and Mort Zuckerman wrung his hands for the fate of his billionaire banker buddies. That was enough to bring my blood to a simmer. But then neocon shill Tony Blankley brought it to a boil by touting the White House-Fox News line about how caution might be in order, but the economy is fundamentally just gangbusters — low unemployment, 3.9% GDP, yada, yada, yada.
Expect to hear this sort of garbage from Republicans more and more as the presidential campaign gets cranked up in the weeks ahead. And clueless Democrats won't know how to respond: Hey, numbers are numbers, and numbers don't lie, do they? Dems hardly talked about the economy at all during their insipid debate last week, even though — as most of McLaughlin's talking heads acknowledged — the economy will be top of mind for voters in 2008.
And those voters are suffering as the dollar is trashed, real inflation tops 10%, and we're already in a recession. But their real-world experience doesn't jibe with the phony-baloney numbers, so they're left dazed and confused.
Enter Ron Paul.
Paul's the guy who can step up and say the economy's not doing well, and the middle class's suffering is real, but the degree of suffering is being covered up by doctored government statistics. He can deliver sound-bite-length explanations of things like hedonics and substitution ("Here's what the government number-crunchers do: When steak becomes too expensive and you start buying hamburger instead, they just decide the price you pay for your protein is still the same. Presto, no inflation!") – and then hammer away at that in his stump speech. He can say in a very plain and direct way that he knows their suffering is real in a way that no other candidate can.
It'll open up his message to confused and frightened middle-class taxpayers in a way that talking about gold and the Fed can't — that part of the educational process can come later. It'll start a big discussion among the pundit class — newspaper columns and cable TV yakfests about "Is Govt. Manipulating Economic Data?" — and spread the message. And because he can point out that this cheating took place under both Bush 43 and Clinton, it taps into the pox-on-both-houses disgust sweeping a big portion of the electorate (and that Paul is benefiting from).
To some extent, Paul has tried to convey this sympathy for the middle class already. "Starting a conversation," to use Hillary Clinton's awful phrase, about doctored economic stats would take it to the next level. Obviously the strategy needs to be better formulated and refined from the thinking-out-loud stage that I've spelled out here. But presented in the right way, I think it could be a home run.
Dave Gonigam
Treading a fine line between contrarian thinking and conspiracy theory, Dave Gonigam explores the nexus of finance, politics, and the media for Agora Financial's 5 Minute Forecast. He joined kindred spirits at Agora Financial in 2007 after a 20-year career as an Emmy award-winning writer, producer, and manager in local TV newsrooms nationwide.
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One of the things that is important to remember is that the former Soviet Union used to doctor their economic statistics too. In a real sense that may have hastened their fall.
When a country is so far gone that it starts lying to itself, how long till the deluge.
Yes, reality and the government statistics are way out of sync.
What annoys me often are two things:
1. The media that accepts government statistics at face value and merely publishes them without any analysis or real explanation. Doing this is NOT good reporting and doesn’t service the reader very well.
2. Then there are the uninformed consumers who act as shrills themselves, touting the government numbers as arguments in forums, claiming that there are only a small group of malcontented media people and consumers that are ruining things for everyone by criticizing the government numbers. You can point them to sites and articles that debunk the numbers but they refuse to pay attention.
Seems like we need a counterpoint organization with good credibility to sift through and vet all government numbers. Maybe something like the GAO?
America neeeds to hear what Mr. Paul has to say. Enough of the stooges whose “Elect ME!” campaign styles were bland way back when they ran for high school class officers. We have been BS’ed for years. If we are gonna suffer, we need to know why.
2. Then there are the uninformed consumers who act as shrills themselves, touting the government numbers as arguments in forums, claiming that there are only a small group of malcontented media people and consumers that are ruining things for everyone by criticizing the government numbers. You can point them to sites and articles that debunk the numbers but they refuse to pay attention.
Seems like we need a counterpoint organization with good credibility to sift through and vet all government numbers. Maybe something like the GAO?
The problem I see is the devaluing of the human being as a source of usefulness. Everyone turns to some kind of ‘system’ or money manipulation (Clift and her ‘class’ warfare distraction, Obama’s “make the rich take care of the poor”).
In reality, the problem is that everyone wants something for nothing. They want a cushy job with lots of money after cushy schools and they want a System of systems to tell them how to do that.
Fortunately, there is a solution, and Nature is going to bring it. It’s called “Descent” or “Collapse” or simply, “Reality”, and it hits right where it needs to hit: smack in the middle of arrogance and stupidity.
We’re all at fault, we all need to make changes. UNfortunately, we all aren’t going to survive them.
Ron Paul is just another American Libertarian, waving a flag, complaining about the world, and spewing out rhetoric about ‘freedom’ and ‘free choice’ and “big government is bad”, but he’s not going to put much more reality into place than anyone else. Only failure is going to do that. We might as well not have an election at all until the Chinese decide what they want to do with our money. Why waste those billions of dollars on advertising something that nobody needs? Just pick any poor slob off the street and say “You’re going to be the Descent President.” Just make sure it isn’t one of those dumb Bushes who will think you said “Decent”. (on second thought, that might work…Jeb…hey Jebbby!)
These are some of the issues we’re wanting to raise awareness of with the next BIG fundraising event, Tea Party 2007! Unlike the original Boston Tea Party, this isn’t about a normal tax, inflation is a hidden tax. People are noticing that their reality doesn’t match what the government is telling them. Even the threat of Terrorism isn’t enough of a distraction anymore.
I doubt it would work. People would frame Paul as a conspiracy theorist and end up linking him with all sorts of whackos.
When I lived in Europe during 1980′s , I noticed that there were not any real middle class folks there, just the have’s + the have-nots. The middle class is pretty much an American pheonomenom. The have’s really don’t want a strong middle class ,as it decreases their power. Now the middle class is pretty much history , with the tax cuts largely for the wealthy who have prospered under GW Bush.God help the poor dumb americans who voted for him! Linda
Hello, Dave, and hope you are well. I hope you don’t mind me putting in a blatant plug (at least I’m honest) here for my new website. It’s for a good cause, after all! BTW, if you heard Dr. Paul vs. Bernanke yesterday, he did mention something like “no one believes the CPI”. Anyway, readers from MN especially, here it is:
http://MN4RonPaul.com
just finished mob, messiahs, and market great read, just about out of the woods they say what aobut the second round of reset on the five year ARMS that will reset up until 2012 from the 2007 5 year ARMS oops we forgot about that didn’t we . . . not.
If promulgating the Truth is construed to be strange, out-of-touch with reality, and the stuff of conspircacy theorists, so be it. Truth, no matter how seemingly far-fetched it may seem to the truly, massively duped, should be heralded from the roof-tops of the highest places in our Gov’t-controlled mass media and their willing accomplises in the press. If pundits for Truth are criticized (as Ron Paul most certainly is) and continually maligned by the neo-con controllers and their duped minions, as “whacked-out” conspiracy mongers, then, perhaps, our message of Truth is beginning to resonate. Remember the rats fleeing the sinking Titanic? What did they realize? Their perception of reality (their game) was suddenly radically at risk and, now, it was time to seek higher ground. We can continue to allow the insiders to persuade us to keep polishing their brass meanwhile, the so-called “whacked-out conspiracy theorists (Ron Paul and his ilk ‘may their tribe increase’) may have the only life ring we can grab if this country will ever return to fiscal responsibility, rugged Americanism / indedpendence, and with God’s help, a better world! The Neo-Keynseian (deficit-spending / printing-press money) econometric sewer model will yield to common sense (Austrian economics) but not, first, without tremendous financial chaos. Yes, we are in a major recession, right now, and some of us have seen it coming for years. The “nuclear storm” is now foreign countries divesting themselves of US dollar-denominated assets. Rumors of China considering this strategy is only the tip of a very large world-wide threat to America’s dollar fiasco. Buy gold or polish brass.
It’s too late gang. To quote the man,”we’re screwed”. Not to say some are’nt willing to keep up the fight,but most are brain dead lemmings wanting to be spoon fed garbage by government and the media. “Hey! what are the scores, and when”s the next game?
Ron Paul did mention manipulated statistics in his rant at Bernake, twice. But they zoomed past rather quickly as he tried to make many relevant points in the few seconds they allow him.
If we elect Ron Paul president in 2008, perhaps the fed can go the way of the dodo bird, and we can stop wasting time listening to an endless stream of government propoganda ministers and scam artists.