| jan 15 2007 | | Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics. | Does anyone believe anything their government tells them anymore? Well, yes there are people whose sole news source is the BBC, CBC, CNN, etc and they take the bait, hook, line and sinker. These suckers unfortunately vote the crooks in time and time again. You only have to use key words like freedom, hero, democracy, ol’ glory, apple pie, the American way or bend over while I fuck you and like any Pavolian dog they will put their X in the right box. Then there are a mass of people who hear the news reporting government statistics and have a worry that what they are told does not match their experience.
Let’s take official inflation figures, any country it doesn’t matter. Inflation figures are managed, even the government admit that. They exclude fuel, or fresh food, or automobiles, or whatever any particular government thinks will result in a more acceptable figure. Acceptable to them that is to them. The reasons are two-fold; one a lot of benefits are adjusted according to the monthly inflation number so a lower ‘core’ number saves millions. Just as important is the ‘feel good’ factor. What government would want savers and people on fixed incomes thinking their savings were disappearing twice as fast as they thought? So with ‘core’ inflation running at 2-3% how come we see our car insurance rocketing, the power bill up over 9%, food out of control, property taxes hiked? You know it. You feel it. Yet still you want to believe your government.
What about unemployment? Yet another area where the government admits the figure is ‘adjusted’. People stop getting benefits, stop registering, are they on official training programmes that may or may not have a job at the end. These people aren’t counted. All this is apart for the general long term trend where people are losing well paid full-time jobs with benefits, or in the case of car companies being paid to liquidate the job and any future benefits. The result has been an increase in minimum wage part-time jobs. I think it would be reasonable to say unemployment and the slow death of underemployment is double the official figure. In most countries there is an underclass of people who have never worked and will never work.
Housing is in a class all of its own. First the housing market bubble is not acknowledged, so the coming consequences do not have to be thought about, even though it was government policy that created and sustained it. The American model is the most obvious and well documented. After the tech bubble crashed wiping out trillions of small investors funds, the Fed slashed interest rates and flooded the market with liquidity. This money flowed into housing. Then they held the rate down far longer than was necessary and only inched it up painfully slowly. Soon, to keep the flow of pressure in the bubble the bankers and regulators were inventing and approving exotic mortgage products like ARM’s 1 trillion of which reset this year, no document mortgages which allowed people who really should not have qualified for a mortgage to buy a house that is a sure bet they will lose this year. In Britain they have just started offering mortgages based on five salaries as opposed to the previous recognised acceptable limit of three and a half times. Shear madness.
The commerce department in November celebrated a rise in home sales, when in fact they discount the 150/200K homes where the ‘proposed’ buyer cancelled their contract and left their deposit. The rules allow this. Easier to understand Toll Bros. when they announce cancellations of 37%. See how the real world differs from the world of government statistics?
| | Respond... |
|
|
 |
|
