John Williams – The “Recovery” Faked By Phony Gov. Numbers
KingWorldNews.com
April 27, 2012
John Williams, of Shadowstats, stated in his latest commentary, “The recovery is an illusion.” There are two graphs in this piece from Williams, which show highly manipulated and phony government GDP reporting versus the inflation corrected real GDP. The difference between the two graphs is a shocking revelation of government propaganda at its best. Here is what Williams had to say: “The illusion of an economic recovery continued with today’s (April 27th) headline report of 2.2% growth in first-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) … Official reporting now shows that GDP activity has moved successively higher … Yet, no other major economic series has confirmed that pattern. If the GDP data were meaningful, that circumstance would be nearly impossible.”
John Williams continues:
“Indeed, the ‘recovery’ is an illusion that has been created as a direct result of methodological changes in government inflation reporting of recent decades. Those methodological changes have resulted in an artificial lowering of official rates of inflation. The faux growth problem is in the use of understated inflation estimates in deflating a number of economic series.
Major economic series that have no underlying pricing base—such as housing starts, payroll employment and consumer confidence—correspondingly do not require inflation adjustment to put them on a consistent theoretical basis with the concept of real (inflation-adjusted) GDP.
Those series confirm a history of business activity in recent years that shows a plunge in the economy from 2006/2007 into late-2008/mid-2009, followed by a period of protracted, low-level stagnation, or bottom-bouncing, instead of a “recovery.”
Following are two graphs reflecting the latest GDP information. The first graph shows the real GDP level, as deflated by the official IPD. Note the recent recovery of activity versus pre-recession levels. The second graph is inflation-corrected.
The Rest…HERE
