US Department Of Commerce Officially Jumps The Shark, Will “Double Seasonally Adjust” GDP Data
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
05/22/2015
As Steve Liemsan hinted a few days ago, in what we thought was a very belated April fools joke, th eBEA has finally thrown in the towel on weak seasonally-adjusted US GDP data, and as a result has decided to officially proceed with a second seasonal adjustment: one which will take all the bad data, and replaced it with nice and sparkly, if totally fake and goalseeked, GDP numbers.
As Bloomberg reports, “the way some parts of U.S. gross domestic product are calculated are about to change in the wake of the debate over persistently depressed first-quarter growth. In a blog post published Friday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis listed a series of alterations it will make in seasonally adjusting data used to calculate economic growth. The changes will be implemented with the release of the initial second-quarter GDP estimate on July 30, the BEA said.”
In other words, as of July 30, the Q1 GDP which will have seen its final print at -1% or worse, will be revised to roughly +1.8%, just to give the Fed the “credibility” to proceed with a September rate hike which means we can now safely assume not even the Fed will launch a “hiking cycle” at a time when the first half GDP will print negative (assuming the Atlanta Fed’s 0.7% Q2 GDP estimate is even modestly accurate).
The Rest…HERE
