Posted on 03/11/2019 7:49:37 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A carefully researched study by economists at the Brookings Institute estimates that the Chinese government inflates its gross domestic product by about 12%.
The reason this is important is that even with the Chinese overestimating their national wealth, they still have a huge economy. And the current downturn in economic growth in China threatens to hurl the world into a serious recession.
Since China managed to weather the fallout from the financial crisis without registering much of a slowdown in its "official" GDP figures, playing "guess the real growth rate" has become one of the most popular parlor games among the professional economist set. Whereas the stakes are much higher for academics on the mainland (one of whom was censored and threatened by government thugs after speculating that GDP growth on the mainland might be closer to 2%), researchers at American think tanks have freely offered estimates ranging from 2% to 4% (which, admittedly, would still put China well ahead of the US).
But as investors and economists once again cast a wary eye toward China as signs of flagging growth are once again threatening to sink the whole world into a recession, a team of researchers from the Brookings Institute has published a carefully researched paper detailing the exact mechanism by which authorities in Beijing inflate the country's GDP figures, while estimating that China's economy is roughly 12% smaller than the official figures would suggest. Brookings published the paper on Thursday, just two days after Party leaders at the annual National Party Congress lowered their economic growth forecast to between 6% and 6.5% of GDP.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
According to Brookings, much of the manipulation in Chinese official government statistics takes place at the local level. In what the FT described as "a legacy of Maoist state planning", authorities in Beijing hand down growth targets to local officials, who use it to goalseek the official statistics they hand back.
"China's national accounts are based on data collected by local governments. However, since local governments are rewarded for meeting growth and investment targets, they have an incentive to skew local statistics. China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) adjusts the data provided by local governments to calculate GDP at the national level," the study's authors said.
Evidence of this is relatively obvious: Year after year, the sum total of China's provincial growth figures is larger than the unadjusted national figures reported by Beijing. Though central authorities accused three provinces of doctoring their data back in 2017, authorities have done little else to discourage the practice.
There are a lot of people who think Brookings is lowballing the number-fudging. Some estimates put the actual GDP number at 50% of the "official" number.
In a speech in Shanghai this week, Michael Pettis, professor of finance at Peking University, warned that China's debt is closely linked to the government's perceived overstatement of its gross domestic product (GDP).
China still has a Communist government. The Soviet Union also inflated their productivity numbers.
You don’t think the Obama Administration also fudged the numbers?
Chinese communists have a date with Math:
Get your popcorn ready!
I think Brookings is lowballing it, too.
Big time.
“American think tanks have freely offered estimates ranging from 2% to 4% (which, admittedly, would still put China well ahead of the US).”
False.
“U.S. economy to grow 2.7 percent in 2018, boosted by Trump tax overhaul”
Actually, the GDP for the USA in 2018 was 2.9% unrevised.
One would think our government and what used to pass for US corporations would have figured that one out. A little slow on the uptake, SNAFU for the US government.
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Now ... work on those New England game day footballs.
I believe Brady has proved that he had no motivation to underinflate footballs.
I think his issue was with overinflated footballs.
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Your comment is not totally understandable.
The official rules of the National Football League require footballs to be inflated to a gauge pressure between 12.5 and 13.5 pounds per square inch (psi).
Brady prefers his game day balls toward the LOW side of that scale.
Now, why did you choose to say, "Brady has proved that he had no motivation to underinflate footballs"? He likes to throw the slightly underinflated footballs (on the low side of the scale).
Once the NFL discovered it had a major problem ensuring the balls were at legal pressure, and started ensuring that they were, how did Brady play?
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Again your question is not understandable or it is just silly.
All I can tell you is that Brady has been great nearly always in his career. Take it from a life-long Pittsburgh Steeler fan.
A few years ago, the Patriots and Brady, late in the season in an important game, decided to come out and throw on nearly every down. (I think it was a Monday Night Game)
The tactic worked ...... for the Patriots. ;-)
The Patriots beat the hell out of us.
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