BTW, isn’t the Federal Government still stupidly insuring home loans with taxpayer dollars? Have they learned NOTHING from the 2008 Bursting of The Fannie Bubble?
That is my understanding. The concept of moral hazard seems to mean nothing to those in charge.
{In economic theory, a moral hazard is a situation where a party will have a tendency to take risks because the costs that could incur will not be felt by the party taking the risk.}
SGS =
Shadow Government Statistics. The owner of the website is a private consulting economist who, out of necessity, had to become a specialist in government economic reporting. I became interested in the site when I realized their stats more accurately reflected both my experience and that of friends who also run small business.
Although there is a newsletter for a fee, there is lots of free information on the site.
Primer Series Intro Unemployment Inflation I Inflation II Inflation III GDP Federal Deficit In short
- The raw data collected for calculating unemployment rate, i.e.the Household Survey is considered the best statistical info used by the government. The 'jimmying' occurs in the used of seasonal adjustments, moving people out of the civilian labor force, and not paying much attention to the numbers working part time who need full time work.
- The number of jobs created, i.e. the Payroll Survey is considered much less reliable. The combination of the use of the Birth and Death Model and seasonal adjustment seem biased toward a growing economy.
- The CPI not longer measures the cost of a set standard of living, It has has been coverted into measuring the cost of a declining standard of living by the use of tools such as the hedonics index, chained dollars, intervention analysis, adjustments for quality change, the substitution effect, geometric weighting, owner's rent equivalence, ... Better yet the effectiveness of the Fed's monetary policy is measured using core inflation which eliminates the cost of two necessities food and energy.
- Since inflation is under counted, the seasonally adjusted GDP is over counted.
I have seen articles using other methods to measure 'real' unemployment, inflation, and GDP that yield result similar to those of SGS but I have not been able to locate the links. Any questions feel free.
Many thanks for all of this information! WOW!! SGS, and even “Moral Hazard” defined!
Since the Fannie Bubble burst in 2008, I have watched a lot of TV shows about economics, especially CNBC.
NONE, repeat N O N E of any of the talking heads or their expert guests have EVER defined what “ Moral hazard “ is defined as being, even though the term is mentioned multiple times a day.
Thanks for the hotlinks, I will check them out after my vay-kay.