U.S. 1Q GDP Growth Revised Down to 1.9%

Fox Business ^ | 5/30/2012 | Fox Business

[scooby321]

U.S. economic growth was a bit slower than initially thought in the first quarter as businesses restocked shelves at a moderate pace and government spending declined sharply.

[cherokee1]

I heard Stu Varney early this morning say that part about consumer spending being up——true enough if you can keep from snickering-—with the price of gas setting records and sales of guns and ammo also setting records there is indeed a smidge of truth init. I expect confirmation soon that sales of pitchforks are up.

[cherokee1]

That chart is a great way to illustrate how fast jobs were going into the overseas terlet even during the housing bubble. The geniuses who were responsible for promoting that bubble should be tied to anchors and allowed to ride the red and blue lines all the way to the bottom. Both of those lines are going to be upside down for at least another decade——

[khelus]

Unfortunately the CPI has been heavily degraded over time, especially over the prior three admins. Instead of calculating the cost of a set standard of living, it now calculates the cost of a declining standard of living. In turn the inflation adjusted GDP has been overstated.

Some links you might find of interest:
http://www.shadowstats.com/article/no-438-public-comment-on-inflation-measurement

http://www.shadowstats.com/article/consumer_price_index

http://www.shadowstats.com/primers-and-reports

[khelus]

Amen to that.

[khelus]

FYI more info available on how the CPI, and therefore inflation adjusted GDP have been degraded.

[Sir Napsalot]

Thank you. It’s a start (for me) ..... I was wondering out loud who exactly uses these numbers, and for what purpose.

I kept seeing periodically reports of such and such indicators which are supposedly telling us how economics is doing, and revisions of them (almost always) afterwards.

Nowadays it seems purely for academic/historic purpose, because nobody (in general public) can have trust in the numbers per se when they come out. Unless people keep and make charts.

[ichabod1]

Exactly. And people do. Revisions are inevitable - the numbers are too big, there’s just going to be error. But people here who are tracking the numbers have exposed a systematic effort to game the system and minimize numbers they don’t like.

[politicianslie]

I don't know why I wrote all that.

It would have been much easier for you to say we have a Muslim Traitor playing POTUS who is doing everything he can to destroy America

While

The presstitutes lie continuously to cover for their Muslim boy who is simply enabling the radical left to destroy America too.

Obama's Muslim buddies are destroying on purpose but the radical left is doing it because they are STUPID.

Americans look at the headlines and have no idea what is going on. Whether they read DU or FREEREPUBLIC, all they know is it ain't going well. Americans are the biggest fools in history.

[Fresh Wind]

Every economic number that comes out of the government from now to the election will be manipulated to make Obama look good. We will see a miraculously recovery as the summer progresses, and by this fall, unicorns will be dancing in the skies, and skittles will rain down on the happy voters. They need some bad news now to make the Obama Miracle seem all the more wonderful.

But after the election, the downward revision will make your head swim.

[khelus]

... nobody (in general public) can have trust in the numbers per se when they come out ...

You might find the reason Williams started keeping his alternate stats, in an effort to remove the 'improvements' that slowly rendered them useless for business planning.

e.g. Part of the reason the CPI no longer reflects a set standard of living is the use of inflation suppressing tactics such as 'owners rent equivalence', 'the substitution effect', 'intervention analysis', using 'core inflation' which has been stripped of the cost of energy and food to measure the effectiveness of the fed, 'geometric instead of arithmetic weighting', 'chained dollars', etc.