“The
first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the
second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a
permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic
opportunists.” – Ernest Hemingway
"A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men ... [W]e have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world -- no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men." – Woodrow Wilson
“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” – Ludwig von Mises
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THE FOURTEEN YEAR RECESSION
“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
“A
great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our
system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation,
therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men … [W]e
have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely
controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world—no longer a
government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and
the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress
of small groups of dominant men.”- Woodrow Wilson
When
you ponder the implications of allowing a small group of powerful
wealthy unaccountable men to control the currency of a nation over the
last one hundred years, you understand why our public education system
sucks. You understand why the government created Common Core curriculum
teaches children that 3 x 4 = 13, as long as you feel good about your
answer. George Carlin was right. The owners of this country (bankers,
billionaires, corporate titans, politicians) want more for themselves
and less for everyone else. They want an educational system that creates
ignorant, obedient, vacuous, obese dullards who question nothing,
consume mass quantities of corporate processed fast food, gaze at
iGadgets, are easily susceptible to media propaganda and compliant to
government regulations and directives. They don’t want highly educated,
critical thinking, civil minded, well informed, questioning citizens
understanding how badly they have been screwed over the last century.
I’m sorry to say, your owners are winning in a landslide.
The
government controlled public education system has flourished beyond all
expectations of your owners. We’ve become a nation of
techno-narcissistic, math challenged, reality TV distracted, welfare
entitled, materialistic, gluttonous, indebted consumers of Chinese slave
labor produced crap. There are more Americans who know the name of
Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s bastard child (North West) than know the
name of our Secretary of State (Ketchup Kerry). Americans can generate a
text or tweet with blinding speed but couldn’t give you change from a
dollar bill if their life depended upon it. They are whizzes at buying
crap on Amazon or Ebay with a credit card, but have never balanced their
checkbook or figured out the concept of deferred gratification and
saving for the future. While the ignorant masses are worked into a
frenzy by the media propaganda machine over gay marriage, diversity,
abortion, climate change, and never ending wars on poverty, drugs and
terror, our owners use their complete capture of the financial,
regulatory, political, judicial and economic systems to pillage the
remaining national wealth they haven’t already extracted.
The
financial illiteracy of the uneducated lower classes and the willful
ignorance of the supposedly highly educated classes has never been more
evident than when examining the concept of Federal Reserve created
currency debasement – also known as inflation. The insidious central
banker created monetary inflation is the cause of all the ills in our
warped, deformed, rigged financialized economic system. The outright
manipulation and falsity of government reported economic data is
designed to obscure the truth and keep the populace unaware of the
deception being executed by the owners of this country. They have
utilized deceit, falsification, propaganda and outright lies to mislead
the public about the true picture of the disastrous financial condition
in this country. Since most people are already trapped in the mental
state of normalcy bias, it is easy for those in control to reinforce
that normalcy bias by manipulating economic data to appear normal and
using their media mouthpieces to perpetuate the false storyline of
recovery and a return to normalcy.
This
is how feckless politicians and government apparatchiks are able to add
$2.8 billion per day to the national debt; a central bank owned by Too
Big To Trust Wall Street banks has been able to create $3.3 trillion out
of thin air and pump it into the veins of its owners; and government
controlled agencies report a declining unemployment rate, no inflation
and a growing economy, without creating an iota of dissent or skepticism
from the public. Americans want to be lied to because it allows them to
continue living lives of delusion, where spending more than you make,
consuming rather than saving, and believing stock market speculation and
home price appreciation will make them rich are viable life strategies.
Even though 90% of the population owns virtually no stocks, they are
convinced record stock market highs are somehow beneficial to their
lives. They actually believe Bernanke/Yellen when they bloviate about
the dangers of deflation. Who would want to pay less for gasoline, food,
rent, or tuition?
Unless
you are beholden to the oligarchs, that sense of stress, discomfort,
feeling that all in not well, and disturbing everyday visual
observations is part of the cognitive dissonance engulfing the nation.
Anyone who opens their eyes and honestly assesses their own financial
condition, along with the obvious deterioration of our suburban sprawl
retail paradise infrastructure, is confronted with information that is
inconsistent with what they hear from their bought off politician
leaders, highly compensated Ivy League trained economists, and
millionaire talking heads in the corporate legacy media. Most people
resolve this inconsistency by ignoring the facts, rejecting the obvious
and refusing to use their common sense. To acknowledge the truth would
require confronting your own part in this Ponzi debt charade disguised
as an economic system. It is easier to believe a big lie than think
critically and face up to decades of irrational behavior and reckless
conduct.
What’s In Your GDP
“The
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is one of the broader measures of economic
activity and is the most widely followed business indicator reported by
the U.S. government. Upward growth biases built into GDP modeling since
the early 1980s, however, have rendered this important series nearly
worthless as an indicator of economic activity. The
popularly followed number in each release is the seasonally adjusted,
annualized quarterly growth rate of real (inflation-adjusted) GDP, where
the current-dollar number is deflated by the BEA’s estimates of
appropriate price changes. It is important to keep in mind that the
lower the inflation rate used in the deflation process, the higher will
be the resulting inflation-adjusted GDP growth.” – John Williams – Shadowstats
GDP
is the economic statistic bankers, politicians and media pundits use to
convince the masses the economy is growing and their lives are
improving. Therefore, it is the statistic most likely to be manipulated,
twisted and engineered in order to portray the storyline required by
the oligarchs. Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth usually
marks a recession. Those in power do not like to report recessions, so
data “massaging” has been required over the last few decades to generate
the required result. Prior to 1991 the government reported the broader
GNP, which includes the
GDP plus the balance of international flows of interest and dividend
payments. Once we became a debtor nation, with massive interest payments
to foreigners, reporting GNP became inconvenient. It is not reported
because it is approximately $900 billion lower than GDP. The creativity
of our keepers knows no bounds. In July of 2013 the government decided
they had found a more “accurate” method for measuring GDP and simply
retroactively increased GDP by $500 billion out of thin air. It’s
amazing how every “more accurate” accounting adjustment improves the
reported data. The economic growth didn’t change, but GDP was boosted by
3%. These adjustments pale in comparison to the decades long
under-reporting of inflation baked into the GDP calculation.
As
John Williams pointed out, GDP is adjusted for inflation. The higher
inflation factored into the calculation, the lower reported GDP. The
deflator used by the BEA in their GDP calculation is even lower than the
already bastardized CPI. According to the BEA, there has only been 32%
inflation since the year 2000. They have only found 1.4% inflation in
the last year and only 7.1% in the last five years. You’d have to be a
zombie from the Walking Dead or
an Ivy League economist to believe those lies. Anyone living in the
real world knows their cost of living has risen at a far greater rate.
According to the government, and unquestioningly reported by the
compliant co-conspirators in the the corporate media, GDP has grown from
$10 trillion in 2000 to $17 trillion today. Even using the ridiculously
low inflation BEA adjustment yields an increase from $12.4 trillion to
only $15.9 trillion in real terms. That pitiful 28% growth over the last
fourteen years is dramatically overstated, as revealed in the graph
below. Using a true rate of inflation exposes the grand fraud being
committed by those in power. The country has been in a never ending
recession since 2000.
Your
normalcy bias is telling you this is impossible. Your government tells
you we have only experienced a recession from the third quarter of 2008
through the third quarter of 2009. So despite experiencing two stock
market crashes, the greatest housing crash in history, and a worldwide
financial system implosion the authorities insist we’ve
had a growing economy 93% of the time over the last fourteen years.
That mental anguish you are feeling is the cognitive dissonance of
wanting to believe your government, but knowing they are lying. It is a
known fact the government, in conspiracy with Greenspan, Congress and
academia, have systematically reduced the reported CPI based upon
hedonistic quality adjustments, geometric weighting alterations,
substitution modifications, and the creation of incomprehensible owner’s
equivalent rent calculations. Since the 1700s consumer inflation had
been estimated by measuring price changes in a fixed-weight basket of
goods, effectively measuring the cost of maintaining a constant standard
of living. This began to change in the early 1980s with the Greenspan
Commission to “save” Social Security and came to a head with the Boskin
Commission in 1995.
Simply
stated, the Greenspan/Boskin Commissions’ task was to reduce future
Social Security payments to senior citizens by deceitfully reducing CPI
and allowing politicians the easy way out. Politicians would lose votes
if they ever had to directly address the unsustainability of Social
Security. Therefore, they allowed academics to work their magic by
understating the CPI and stealing $700 billion from retirees in the ten
years ending in 2006. With 10,000 baby boomers per day turning 65 for
the next eighteen years, understating CPI will rob them of trillions in
payments. This is a cowardly dishonest method of extending the life of
Social Security.
If
CPI was calculated exactly as it was computed prior to 1983, it would
have averaged between 5% and 10% over the last fourteen years. Even
computing it based on the 1990 calculation prior to the Boskin
Commission adjustments, would have produced annual inflation of 4% to
7%. A glance at an inflation chart from 1872 through today reveals the
complete and utter failure of the Federal Reserve in achieving their
stated mandate of price stability. They have managed to reduce the
purchasing power of your dollar by 95% over the last 100 years. You may
also notice the net deflation from 1872 until 1913, when the American
economy was growing rapidly. It is almost as if the Federal Reserve’s
true mandate has been to create inflation, finance wars, perpetuate the
proliferation of debt, artificially create booms and busts, enrich their
Wall Street owners, and impoverish the masses. Happy Birthday Federal
Reserve!!!
When
you connect the dots you realize the under-reporting of inflation
benefits the corporate fascist surveillance state. If the government was
reporting the true rate of inflation, mega-corporations would be forced
to pay their workers higher wages, reducing profits, reducing corporate
bonuses, and sticking a pin in their stock prices. The toady economists
at the Federal Reserve would be unable to sustain their ludicrous ZIRP
and absurd QEfinity stock market levitation policies. Reporting a true
rate of inflation would force long-term interest rates higher. These
higher rates, along with higher COLA increases to government
entitlements, would blow a hole in the deficit and force our spineless
politicians to address our unsustainable economic system. There would be
no stock market or debt bubble. If the clueless dupes watching CNBC
bimbos and shills on a daily basis were told the economy has been in
fourteen year downturn, they might just wake up and demand
accountability from their leaders and an overhaul of this corrupt
system.
Mother Should I Trust the Government?
We
know the BEA has deflated GDP by only 32% since 2000. We know the BLS
reports the CPI has only risen by 37% since 2000. Should I trust the
government or trust the facts and my own eyes? The data is available to
see if the government figures pass the smell test. If you are reading
this, you can remember your life in 2000. Americans know what it cost
for food, energy, shelter, healthcare, transportation and entertainment
in 2000, but they unquestioningly accept the falsified inflation figures
produced by the propaganda machine known as our government. The chart
below is a fairly comprehensive list of items most people might need to
live in this world. A critical thinking individual might wonder how the
government can proclaim inflation of 32% to 37% over the last fourteen
years, when the true cost of living has grown by 50% to 100% for most
daily living expenses. The huge increases in property taxes, sales
taxes, government fees, tolls and income taxes aren’t even factored in
the chart. It seems gold has smelled out the currency debasement and the
lies of our leaders. This explains the concerted effort by the powers
that be to suppress the price of gold by any means necessary.
The
government and their media mouthpieces expect the ignorant masses to
believe they have advanced their standard of living, with median
household income growing from $40,800 to $52,500 since 2000. But, even
using the badly flawed CPI to adjust these figures into real terms
reveals real median household income to be 7.3% below the level of 2000.
Using a true inflation figure would cause a CNBC talking head to have
an epileptic seizure.
The
picture is even bleaker when broken down into the age of households,
with younger households suffering devastating real declines in household
income since 2000. I guess all those retail clerk, cashier, waitress,
waiter, food prep, and housekeeper jobs created over the last few years
aren’t cutting the mustard. Maybe that explains the 30 million increase
(175% increase) in food stamp recipients since 2000, encompassing 19% of
all households in the U.S. Luckily the banking oligarchs were able to
convince the pliable masses to increase their credit card, auto and
student loan debt from $1.5 trillion to $3.1 trillion over the fourteen
year descent into delusion.
When
you get your head around this unprecedented decline in household income
over the last fourteen years, along with the 50% to 100% rise in costs
to live in the real world, as opposed to the theoretical world of the
Federal Reserve and BLS, you will understand the long term decline in
retail sales reflected in the following chart. When you adjust monthly
retail sales for gasoline (an additional tax), inflation (understated),
and population growth, you understand why retailers are closing
thousands of stores and hurdling towards inevitable bankruptcy. Retail
sales are 6.9% below the June 2005 peak and 4% below levels reached in
2000. And this is with millions of retail square feet added over this
time frame. We know the dramatic surge from the 2009 lows was not
prompted by an increase in household income. So how did the 11%
proliferation of spending happen?
The up swell in retail spending began to accelerate in late 2010. Considering credit card debt outstanding is at exactly where it was in October 2010, it seems consumers playing with their own money turned off the spigot of speculation. It has been non-revolving debt that has skyrocketed from $1.63 trillion in February 2010 to $2.26 trillion today. This unprecedented 39% rise in four years has been engineered by the government, using your tax dollars and the tax dollars of unborn generations. The Federal government has complete control of the student loan market and with their 85% ownership of Ally Financial, the largest auto financing company, a dominant position in the auto loan market. The peddling of $400 billion of subprime student loan debt and $200 billion of subprime auto loan debt has created the illusion of a retail recovery. The student loan debt has been utilized by University of Phoenix MBA wannabes to buy iGadgets, the latest PS3 version of Grand Theft Auto and the latest glazed donut breakfast sandwich on the market. It’s nothing but another debt financed bubble that will end in tears for the American taxpayer, as hundreds of billions will be written off.
The
fake retail recovery pales in comparison to the wolves of Wall Street
produced housing recovery sham. They deserve an Academy Award for best
fantasy production. The Federal Reserve fed Wall Street hedge fund
purchase of millions of foreclosed shanties across the nation has
produced media proclaimed home price increases of 10% to 30% in cities
across the country. Withholding foreclosures from the market and
creating artificial demand with free money provided by the Federal
Reserve has temporarily added $4 trillion of housing net worth and
reduced the number of underwater mortgages on the books of the Too Big
To Trust Wall Street banks. The percentage of investor purchases and
cash purchases is at all-time highs, while the percentage of first time
buyers is at all-time lows. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can
look at the long-term chart of mortgage applications and realize we are
still in a recession. Applications are 35% below levels at the depths of
the 2008/2009 recession. Applications are 65% below levels at the
housing market peak in 2005. They are even 35% below 2000 levels. There
is no real housing recovery, despite the propaganda peddled by the NAR,
CNBC, and Wall Street. It’s a fraud.
It is the pinnacle of arrogance and hubris that a few Ivy League educated economists sitting in the Marriner Eccles Building in the swamps of Washington D.C., who have never worked a day in their lives at a real job, think they can create wealth and pull the levers of money creation to control the American and global financial systems. All they have done is perfect the art of bubble finance in order to enrich their owners at the expense of the rest of us. Their policies have induced unwarranted hope and speculation on a grand scale. Greenspan and Bernanke have provoked multiple bouts of extreme speculation in stocks and housing over the last 15 years, with the subsequent inevitable collapses. Fed encouraged gambling does not create wealth it just redistributes it from the peasants to the aristocracy. The Fed has again produced an epic bubble in stock and bond valuations which will result in another collapse. Normalcy bias keeps the majority from seeing the cliff straight ahead. Federal Reserve monetary policies have distorted financial markets, created extreme imbalances, encouraged excessive risk taking, and ruined the lives of working class people. Take a long hard look at the chart below and answer one question. Was QE designed to benefit Main Street or Wall Street?
The average American has experienced a fourteen year recession caused by the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve. Our leaders could have learned the lesson of two Fed induced collapses in the space of eight years and voluntarily abandoned the policies of reckless credit expansion, instead embracing policies encouraging saving, capital investment and balanced budgets. They have chosen the same cure as the disease, which will lead to crisis, catastrophe and collapse.
“There
is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by
credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come
sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit
expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency
system involved.” – Ludwig von Mises
Peace, love and happiness...until next time...
The Fourteen Year Recession, Part 2
What’s In Your GDP
GDP is the economic statistic bankers, politicians and media pundits use to convince the masses the economy is growing and their lives are improving. Therefore, it is the statistic most likely to be manipulated, twisted and engineered in order to portray the storyline required by the oligarchs. Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth usually marks a recession.
Those in power do not like to report recessions, so data “massaging” has been required over the last few decades to generate the required result. Prior to 1991, the government reported the broader GNP, which includes the GDP plus the balance of international flows of interest and dividend payments.
Once we became a debtor nation, with massive interest payments to foreigners, reporting GNP became inconvenient. It is not reported because it is approximately $900 billion lower than GDP. The creativity of our keepers knows no bounds. In July 2013, the government decided they had found a more “accurate” method for measuring GDP and simply retroactively increased GDP by $500 billion out of thin air.
It’s amazing how every “more accurate” accounting adjustment improves the reported data. The economic growth didn’t change, but GDP was boosted by 3%. These adjustments pale in comparison to the decades long under-reporting of inflation baked into the GDP calculation.
As John Williams pointed out, GDP is adjusted for inflation. The higher inflation factored into the calculation, the lower reported GDP. The deflator used by the BEA in their GDP calculation is even lower than the already bastardized CPI. According to the BEA, there has only been 32% inflation since the year 2000. They have only found 1.4% inflation in the last year and only 7.1% in the last five years.
You’d have to be a zombie from The Walking Dead or an Ivy League economist to believe those lies. Anyone living in the real world knows their cost of living has risen at a far greater rate. According to the government, and unquestioningly reported by the compliant co-conspirators in the corporate media, GDP has grown from $10 trillion in 2000 to $17 trillion today.
Even using the ridiculously low inflation BEA adjustment yields an increase from $12.4 trillion to only $15.9 trillion in real terms. That pitiful 28% growth over the last 14 years is dramatically overstated, as revealed in the graph below. Using a true rate of inflation exposes the grand fraud being committed by those in power. The country has been in a never ending recession since 2000.
Your normalcy bias is telling you this is impossible. Your government tells you we have only experienced a recession from the third quarter of 2008 through the third quarter of 2009. So despite experiencing two stock market crashes, the greatest housing crash in history, and a worldwide financial system implosion the authorities insist we’ve had a growing economy 93% of the time over the last 14 years.
That mental anguish you are feeling is the cognitive dissonance of wanting to believe your government, but knowing they are lying. It is a known fact the government, in conspiracy with Greenspan, Congress and academia, have systematically reduced the reported CPI based upon hedonistic quality adjustments, geometric weighting alterations, substitution modifications, and the creation of incomprehensible owner’s equivalent rent calculations.
Since the 1700s consumer inflation had been estimated by measuring price changes in a fixed-weight basket of goods, effectively measuring the cost of maintaining a constant standard of living. This began to change in the early 1980s with the Greenspan Commission to “save” Social Security and came to a head with the Boskin Commission in 1995.
Simply stated, the Greenspan/Boskin Commissions’ task was to reduce future Social Security payments to senior citizens by deceitfully reducing CPI and allowing politicians the easy way out. Politicians would lose votes if they ever had to directly address the unsustainability of Social Security.
Therefore, they allowed academics to work their magic by understating the CPI and stealing $700 billion from retirees in the 10 years ending in 2006. With 10,000 baby boomers per day turning 65 for the next 18 years, understating CPI will rob them of trillions in payments. This is a cowardly dishonest method of extending the life of Social Security.
If CPI was calculated exactly as it was computed prior to 1983, it would have averaged between 5-10% over the last 14 years. Even computing it based on the 1990 calculation prior to the Boskin Commission adjustments, would have produced annual inflation of 4-7%.
A glance at an inflation chart from 1872 through today reveals the complete and utter failure of the Federal Reserve in achieving their stated mandate of price stability. They have managed to reduce the purchasing power of your dollar by 95% over the last 100 years. You may also notice the net deflation from 1872 until 1913, when the American economy was growing rapidly.
[Ed. note: Mismanaging an economy's form of currency isn't an American specialty. Look back through history and you'll see governments all over the world ruining their country's money. And with it, any chance of economic growth and progress. Laissez Faire president Addison Wiggin and Agora Publishing president and CEO Bill Bonner documented this in their book The New Empire of Debt. Click here to purchase a copy today.]
It is almost as if the Federal Reserve’s true mandate has been to create inflation, finance wars, perpetuate the proliferation of debt, artificially create booms and busts, enrich their Wall Street owners, and impoverish the masses. Happy Birthday, Federal Reserve!!!
When you connect the dots you realize the under-reporting of inflation benefits the corporate fascist surveillance state. If the government was reporting the true rate of inflation, mega-corporations would be forced to pay their workers higher wages, reducing profits, reducing corporate bonuses, and sticking a pin in their stock prices.
The toady economists at the Federal Reserve would be unable to sustain their ludicrous ZIRP and absurd QEfinity stock market levitation policies. Reporting a true rate of inflation would force long-term interest rates higher. These higher rates, along with higher COLA increases to government entitlements, would blow a hole in the deficit and force our spineless politicians to address our unsustainable economic system.
There would be no stock market or debt bubble. If the clueless dupes watching CNBC bimbos and shills on a daily basis were told the economy has been in a 14-year downturn, they might just wake up and demand accountability from their leaders and an overhaul of this corrupt system.
- See more at: http://www.tngovwatch.org/the-fourteen-year-recession-part-2/#sthash.uYp9gLfl.dpuf
“The gross domestic product (GDP) is one of the broader measures of economic activity and is the most widely followed business indicator reported by the U.S. government. Upward growth biases built into GDP modeling since the early 1980s, however, have rendered this important series nearly worthless as an indicator of economic activity. The popularly followed number in each release is the seasonally adjusted, annualized quarterly growth rate of real (inflation-adjusted) GDP, where the current-dollar number is deflated by the BEA’s estimates of appropriate price changes. It is important to keep in mind that the lower the inflation rate used in the deflation process, the higher will be the resulting inflation-adjusted GDP growth.” — John Williams, Shadowstats
 |
| James Quinn |
GDP is the economic statistic bankers, politicians and media pundits use to convince the masses the economy is growing and their lives are improving. Therefore, it is the statistic most likely to be manipulated, twisted and engineered in order to portray the storyline required by the oligarchs. Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth usually marks a recession.
Those in power do not like to report recessions, so data “massaging” has been required over the last few decades to generate the required result. Prior to 1991, the government reported the broader GNP, which includes the GDP plus the balance of international flows of interest and dividend payments.
Once we became a debtor nation, with massive interest payments to foreigners, reporting GNP became inconvenient. It is not reported because it is approximately $900 billion lower than GDP. The creativity of our keepers knows no bounds. In July 2013, the government decided they had found a more “accurate” method for measuring GDP and simply retroactively increased GDP by $500 billion out of thin air.
It’s amazing how every “more accurate” accounting adjustment improves the reported data. The economic growth didn’t change, but GDP was boosted by 3%. These adjustments pale in comparison to the decades long under-reporting of inflation baked into the GDP calculation.
As John Williams pointed out, GDP is adjusted for inflation. The higher inflation factored into the calculation, the lower reported GDP. The deflator used by the BEA in their GDP calculation is even lower than the already bastardized CPI. According to the BEA, there has only been 32% inflation since the year 2000. They have only found 1.4% inflation in the last year and only 7.1% in the last five years.
You’d have to be a zombie from The Walking Dead or an Ivy League economist to believe those lies. Anyone living in the real world knows their cost of living has risen at a far greater rate. According to the government, and unquestioningly reported by the compliant co-conspirators in the corporate media, GDP has grown from $10 trillion in 2000 to $17 trillion today.
Even using the ridiculously low inflation BEA adjustment yields an increase from $12.4 trillion to only $15.9 trillion in real terms. That pitiful 28% growth over the last 14 years is dramatically overstated, as revealed in the graph below. Using a true rate of inflation exposes the grand fraud being committed by those in power. The country has been in a never ending recession since 2000.
Your normalcy bias is telling you this is impossible. Your government tells you we have only experienced a recession from the third quarter of 2008 through the third quarter of 2009. So despite experiencing two stock market crashes, the greatest housing crash in history, and a worldwide financial system implosion the authorities insist we’ve had a growing economy 93% of the time over the last 14 years.
That mental anguish you are feeling is the cognitive dissonance of wanting to believe your government, but knowing they are lying. It is a known fact the government, in conspiracy with Greenspan, Congress and academia, have systematically reduced the reported CPI based upon hedonistic quality adjustments, geometric weighting alterations, substitution modifications, and the creation of incomprehensible owner’s equivalent rent calculations.
Since the 1700s consumer inflation had been estimated by measuring price changes in a fixed-weight basket of goods, effectively measuring the cost of maintaining a constant standard of living. This began to change in the early 1980s with the Greenspan Commission to “save” Social Security and came to a head with the Boskin Commission in 1995.
Simply stated, the Greenspan/Boskin Commissions’ task was to reduce future Social Security payments to senior citizens by deceitfully reducing CPI and allowing politicians the easy way out. Politicians would lose votes if they ever had to directly address the unsustainability of Social Security.
Therefore, they allowed academics to work their magic by understating the CPI and stealing $700 billion from retirees in the 10 years ending in 2006. With 10,000 baby boomers per day turning 65 for the next 18 years, understating CPI will rob them of trillions in payments. This is a cowardly dishonest method of extending the life of Social Security.
If CPI was calculated exactly as it was computed prior to 1983, it would have averaged between 5-10% over the last 14 years. Even computing it based on the 1990 calculation prior to the Boskin Commission adjustments, would have produced annual inflation of 4-7%.
A glance at an inflation chart from 1872 through today reveals the complete and utter failure of the Federal Reserve in achieving their stated mandate of price stability. They have managed to reduce the purchasing power of your dollar by 95% over the last 100 years. You may also notice the net deflation from 1872 until 1913, when the American economy was growing rapidly.
[Ed. note: Mismanaging an economy's form of currency isn't an American specialty. Look back through history and you'll see governments all over the world ruining their country's money. And with it, any chance of economic growth and progress. Laissez Faire president Addison Wiggin and Agora Publishing president and CEO Bill Bonner documented this in their book The New Empire of Debt. Click here to purchase a copy today.]
It is almost as if the Federal Reserve’s true mandate has been to create inflation, finance wars, perpetuate the proliferation of debt, artificially create booms and busts, enrich their Wall Street owners, and impoverish the masses. Happy Birthday, Federal Reserve!!!
When you connect the dots you realize the under-reporting of inflation benefits the corporate fascist surveillance state. If the government was reporting the true rate of inflation, mega-corporations would be forced to pay their workers higher wages, reducing profits, reducing corporate bonuses, and sticking a pin in their stock prices.
The toady economists at the Federal Reserve would be unable to sustain their ludicrous ZIRP and absurd QEfinity stock market levitation policies. Reporting a true rate of inflation would force long-term interest rates higher. These higher rates, along with higher COLA increases to government entitlements, would blow a hole in the deficit and force our spineless politicians to address our unsustainable economic system.
There would be no stock market or debt bubble. If the clueless dupes watching CNBC bimbos and shills on a daily basis were told the economy has been in a 14-year downturn, they might just wake up and demand accountability from their leaders and an overhaul of this corrupt system.
- See more at: http://www.tngovwatch.org/the-fourteen-year-recession-part-2/#sthash.uYp9gLfl.dpuf
The Fourteen Year Recession, Part 2
What’s In Your GDP
GDP is the economic statistic bankers, politicians and media pundits use to convince the masses the economy is growing and their lives are improving. Therefore, it is the statistic most likely to be manipulated, twisted and engineered in order to portray the storyline required by the oligarchs. Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth usually marks a recession.
Those in power do not like to report recessions, so data “massaging” has been required over the last few decades to generate the required result. Prior to 1991, the government reported the broader GNP, which includes the GDP plus the balance of international flows of interest and dividend payments.
Once we became a debtor nation, with massive interest payments to foreigners, reporting GNP became inconvenient. It is not reported because it is approximately $900 billion lower than GDP. The creativity of our keepers knows no bounds. In July 2013, the government decided they had found a more “accurate” method for measuring GDP and simply retroactively increased GDP by $500 billion out of thin air.
It’s amazing how every “more accurate” accounting adjustment improves the reported data. The economic growth didn’t change, but GDP was boosted by 3%. These adjustments pale in comparison to the decades long under-reporting of inflation baked into the GDP calculation.
As John Williams pointed out, GDP is adjusted for inflation. The higher inflation factored into the calculation, the lower reported GDP. The deflator used by the BEA in their GDP calculation is even lower than the already bastardized CPI. According to the BEA, there has only been 32% inflation since the year 2000. They have only found 1.4% inflation in the last year and only 7.1% in the last five years.
You’d have to be a zombie from The Walking Dead or an Ivy League economist to believe those lies. Anyone living in the real world knows their cost of living has risen at a far greater rate. According to the government, and unquestioningly reported by the compliant co-conspirators in the corporate media, GDP has grown from $10 trillion in 2000 to $17 trillion today.
Even using the ridiculously low inflation BEA adjustment yields an increase from $12.4 trillion to only $15.9 trillion in real terms. That pitiful 28% growth over the last 14 years is dramatically overstated, as revealed in the graph below. Using a true rate of inflation exposes the grand fraud being committed by those in power. The country has been in a never ending recession since 2000.
Your normalcy bias is telling you this is impossible. Your government tells you we have only experienced a recession from the third quarter of 2008 through the third quarter of 2009. So despite experiencing two stock market crashes, the greatest housing crash in history, and a worldwide financial system implosion the authorities insist we’ve had a growing economy 93% of the time over the last 14 years.
That mental anguish you are feeling is the cognitive dissonance of wanting to believe your government, but knowing they are lying. It is a known fact the government, in conspiracy with Greenspan, Congress and academia, have systematically reduced the reported CPI based upon hedonistic quality adjustments, geometric weighting alterations, substitution modifications, and the creation of incomprehensible owner’s equivalent rent calculations.
Since the 1700s consumer inflation had been estimated by measuring price changes in a fixed-weight basket of goods, effectively measuring the cost of maintaining a constant standard of living. This began to change in the early 1980s with the Greenspan Commission to “save” Social Security and came to a head with the Boskin Commission in 1995.
Simply stated, the Greenspan/Boskin Commissions’ task was to reduce future Social Security payments to senior citizens by deceitfully reducing CPI and allowing politicians the easy way out. Politicians would lose votes if they ever had to directly address the unsustainability of Social Security.
Therefore, they allowed academics to work their magic by understating the CPI and stealing $700 billion from retirees in the 10 years ending in 2006. With 10,000 baby boomers per day turning 65 for the next 18 years, understating CPI will rob them of trillions in payments. This is a cowardly dishonest method of extending the life of Social Security.
If CPI was calculated exactly as it was computed prior to 1983, it would have averaged between 5-10% over the last 14 years. Even computing it based on the 1990 calculation prior to the Boskin Commission adjustments, would have produced annual inflation of 4-7%.
A glance at an inflation chart from 1872 through today reveals the complete and utter failure of the Federal Reserve in achieving their stated mandate of price stability. They have managed to reduce the purchasing power of your dollar by 95% over the last 100 years. You may also notice the net deflation from 1872 until 1913, when the American economy was growing rapidly.
[Ed. note: Mismanaging an economy's form of currency isn't an American specialty. Look back through history and you'll see governments all over the world ruining their country's money. And with it, any chance of economic growth and progress. Laissez Faire president Addison Wiggin and Agora Publishing president and CEO Bill Bonner documented this in their book The New Empire of Debt. Click here to purchase a copy today.]
It is almost as if the Federal Reserve’s true mandate has been to create inflation, finance wars, perpetuate the proliferation of debt, artificially create booms and busts, enrich their Wall Street owners, and impoverish the masses. Happy Birthday, Federal Reserve!!!
When you connect the dots you realize the under-reporting of inflation benefits the corporate fascist surveillance state. If the government was reporting the true rate of inflation, mega-corporations would be forced to pay their workers higher wages, reducing profits, reducing corporate bonuses, and sticking a pin in their stock prices.
The toady economists at the Federal Reserve would be unable to sustain their ludicrous ZIRP and absurd QEfinity stock market levitation policies. Reporting a true rate of inflation would force long-term interest rates higher. These higher rates, along with higher COLA increases to government entitlements, would blow a hole in the deficit and force our spineless politicians to address our unsustainable economic system.
There would be no stock market or debt bubble. If the clueless dupes watching CNBC bimbos and shills on a daily basis were told the economy has been in a 14-year downturn, they might just wake up and demand accountability from their leaders and an overhaul of this corrupt system.
- See more at: http://www.tngovwatch.org/the-fourteen-year-recession-part-2/#sthash.uYp9gLfl.dpuf
“The gross domestic product (GDP) is one of the broader measures of economic activity and is the most widely followed business indicator reported by the U.S. government. Upward growth biases built into GDP modeling since the early 1980s, however, have rendered this important series nearly worthless as an indicator of economic activity. The popularly followed number in each release is the seasonally adjusted, annualized quarterly growth rate of real (inflation-adjusted) GDP, where the current-dollar number is deflated by the BEA’s estimates of appropriate price changes. It is important to keep in mind that the lower the inflation rate used in the deflation process, the higher will be the resulting inflation-adjusted GDP growth.” — John Williams, Shadowstats
|
| James Quinn |
GDP is the economic statistic bankers, politicians and media pundits use to convince the masses the economy is growing and their lives are improving. Therefore, it is the statistic most likely to be manipulated, twisted and engineered in order to portray the storyline required by the oligarchs. Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth usually marks a recession.
Those in power do not like to report recessions, so data “massaging” has been required over the last few decades to generate the required result. Prior to 1991, the government reported the broader GNP, which includes the GDP plus the balance of international flows of interest and dividend payments.
Once we became a debtor nation, with massive interest payments to foreigners, reporting GNP became inconvenient. It is not reported because it is approximately $900 billion lower than GDP. The creativity of our keepers knows no bounds. In July 2013, the government decided they had found a more “accurate” method for measuring GDP and simply retroactively increased GDP by $500 billion out of thin air.
It’s amazing how every “more accurate” accounting adjustment improves the reported data. The economic growth didn’t change, but GDP was boosted by 3%. These adjustments pale in comparison to the decades long under-reporting of inflation baked into the GDP calculation.
As John Williams pointed out, GDP is adjusted for inflation. The higher inflation factored into the calculation, the lower reported GDP. The deflator used by the BEA in their GDP calculation is even lower than the already bastardized CPI. According to the BEA, there has only been 32% inflation since the year 2000. They have only found 1.4% inflation in the last year and only 7.1% in the last five years.
You’d have to be a zombie from The Walking Dead or an Ivy League economist to believe those lies. Anyone living in the real world knows their cost of living has risen at a far greater rate. According to the government, and unquestioningly reported by the compliant co-conspirators in the corporate media, GDP has grown from $10 trillion in 2000 to $17 trillion today.
Even using the ridiculously low inflation BEA adjustment yields an increase from $12.4 trillion to only $15.9 trillion in real terms. That pitiful 28% growth over the last 14 years is dramatically overstated, as revealed in the graph below. Using a true rate of inflation exposes the grand fraud being committed by those in power. The country has been in a never ending recession since 2000.
Your normalcy bias is telling you this is impossible. Your government tells you we have only experienced a recession from the third quarter of 2008 through the third quarter of 2009. So despite experiencing two stock market crashes, the greatest housing crash in history, and a worldwide financial system implosion the authorities insist we’ve had a growing economy 93% of the time over the last 14 years.
That mental anguish you are feeling is the cognitive dissonance of wanting to believe your government, but knowing they are lying. It is a known fact the government, in conspiracy with Greenspan, Congress and academia, have systematically reduced the reported CPI based upon hedonistic quality adjustments, geometric weighting alterations, substitution modifications, and the creation of incomprehensible owner’s equivalent rent calculations.
Since the 1700s consumer inflation had been estimated by measuring price changes in a fixed-weight basket of goods, effectively measuring the cost of maintaining a constant standard of living. This began to change in the early 1980s with the Greenspan Commission to “save” Social Security and came to a head with the Boskin Commission in 1995.
Simply stated, the Greenspan/Boskin Commissions’ task was to reduce future Social Security payments to senior citizens by deceitfully reducing CPI and allowing politicians the easy way out. Politicians would lose votes if they ever had to directly address the unsustainability of Social Security.
Therefore, they allowed academics to work their magic by understating the CPI and stealing $700 billion from retirees in the 10 years ending in 2006. With 10,000 baby boomers per day turning 65 for the next 18 years, understating CPI will rob them of trillions in payments. This is a cowardly dishonest method of extending the life of Social Security.
If CPI was calculated exactly as it was computed prior to 1983, it would have averaged between 5-10% over the last 14 years. Even computing it based on the 1990 calculation prior to the Boskin Commission adjustments, would have produced annual inflation of 4-7%.
A glance at an inflation chart from 1872 through today reveals the complete and utter failure of the Federal Reserve in achieving their stated mandate of price stability. They have managed to reduce the purchasing power of your dollar by 95% over the last 100 years. You may also notice the net deflation from 1872 until 1913, when the American economy was growing rapidly.
[Ed. note: Mismanaging an economy's form of currency isn't an American specialty. Look back through history and you'll see governments all over the world ruining their country's money. And with it, any chance of economic growth and progress. Laissez Faire president Addison Wiggin and Agora Publishing president and CEO Bill Bonner documented this in their book The New Empire of Debt. Click here to purchase a copy today.]
It is almost as if the Federal Reserve’s true mandate has been to create inflation, finance wars, perpetuate the proliferation of debt, artificially create booms and busts, enrich their Wall Street owners, and impoverish the masses. Happy Birthday, Federal Reserve!!!
When you connect the dots you realize the under-reporting of inflation benefits the corporate fascist surveillance state. If the government was reporting the true rate of inflation, mega-corporations would be forced to pay their workers higher wages, reducing profits, reducing corporate bonuses, and sticking a pin in their stock prices.
The toady economists at the Federal Reserve would be unable to sustain their ludicrous ZIRP and absurd QEfinity stock market levitation policies. Reporting a true rate of inflation would force long-term interest rates higher. These higher rates, along with higher COLA increases to government entitlements, would blow a hole in the deficit and force our spineless politicians to address our unsustainable economic system.
There would be no stock market or debt bubble. If the clueless dupes watching CNBC bimbos and shills on a daily basis were told the economy has been in a 14-year downturn, they might just wake up and demand accountability from their leaders and an overhaul of this corrupt system.
- See more at: http://www.tngovwatch.org/the-fourteen-year-recession-part-2/#sthash.uYp9gLfl.dpuf
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