Were economic data manipulated?

San Diego Union-Tribune ^ | August 9, 2002 | Robert Novak

[Toidylop]

"Most startling, the Commerce Department in 2000 showed the economy on an upswing through most of the election year while in fact it was declining..." The RATs modus operandi is just simply cooking the book... for political purpose!!! NAH...

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

So is it typical for these numbers to be off by 10-30%? What is the historical accuracy?

[FITZ]

What did we expect? The Clintons ran the government like they ran the Whitewater realestate scam.

[steve50]

We had Citigroup and JPM helping to hide loans, sounds like this goes farther than the rats. Some powerful people were interested in keeping the market inflated

[Tuor]

Wash. Rinse. Spin. Dry.

Repeat as necessary.

Tuor

[Thisiswhoweare]

Undersecretary of Commerce Rob Shapiro, a pioneer "New Democrat" and early friend and supporter of Bill Clinton. I asked him flatly: "Did you cook the books?" Shapiro laughed it off, asserting that the Bureau of Economic Analysis is "the most nonpolitical, nonpartisan agency in the government."

The smoking gun. Cinton packed the various agencies with his imps, and regardless of their denials, they cooked everything. Now they are a danger to both the President and the country, as they countinue their manipulations. President Bush needs to find them and remove them NOW. I also hope someone looks into what Clinton's troops did to OMB - there is one monster still luking in the wings.

[T. P. Pole]

I got true-blue libs here at work that sincerly believe that the economy first tanked the day Bush was elected. They say things like "must be a republican in the White House again, the economy's back down."

I'll show them a five year NASDAQ chart showing the downturn started much earlier, and their brain freezes. They'll claim the numbers are faked, or some such.

Something like this article would just short circuit them.

[aShepard]

"The Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates before-tax profits of domestic nonfinancial corporations quarterly. Revised figures last week showed profits were really lower by 10.7 percent, 12.2 percent, 15.2 percent and 18 percent for the four quarters of 1999. In 2000, this gap became a chasm. The revised quarterly profits for the election year are lower than the announced figures by 23.3 percent, 25.9 percent, 29.9 percent and 28.2 percent.

And, this data is the same data that is used to make projections as to the future surplus to the treasury.

So, all of the talk about the future surplus was total BullS##t, and all the crowing about the tax cut cutting into a non-existent future surplus is all Bulls##t, and the Bush administration macro-economic impact of the ten year tax reduction is all based on Bulls##t.

So, now as we overspend our budget, sometime during the next six years, the republicans will need to rescind a large portion of the tax reduction, and Bush will take the blame.

Folks, we have finally found the clinton legacy!

[1Old Pro]

BUMP TO THE NEW YORK TIMES, ABC, CBS,NBC,CNN,MSNBC,CNBC,FOX,WASHINGTON POST.....

[ican'tbelieveit]

Absolutely. Or after accusing the Bush Whitehouse & tax cut for this turn of events, point out that the FED was raising interest rates for months before Bush came into office trying to keep this from happening......LIB replies will always then be that you can't blame the economy on a president.

[Linda Liberty]

I seem to recall Bush the elder lost to Bill Clinton in
large part because the same incompetent or crooked
government bureaucracy claimed the economy was in a recession
through the election, when actually it had come out of it
and was booming a quarter or two before the election,
according to the revisions made after the election.

[doug from upland]

As governor, Clinton had appointed over 3,000 of his cronies to judgeships, boards, commissions, agencies, offices, etc. That is a huge number in a state of just over a million people. He controlled everything. That is exactly what he did in DC.

[Scott from the Left Coast]

How can this be surprising? The Clintons are text-book fascists. So why would we think that they wouldn't alter data under their own control to suit their purposes?

[Scott from the Left Coast]

BUMP TO THE NEW YORK TIMES, ABC, CBS,NBC,CNN,MSNBC,CNBC,FOX,WASHINGTON POST.....

And when pigs fly...

[Howlin]

Aren't you funny this morning. :-)

[Howlin]

Your recollection is VERY good.

[Howlin]

That is exactly what he did in DC.

And the people he put in place in D.C. now have become a silent group, sitting there, waiting for "the return" to office of "one of them."

[cake_crumb]

"How could there be this big of a discrepancy? How could the government have reported steadily rising profits when they actually peaked in 1998?"

Many people SAID the Clinton administration figures did not reflect the true state of the economy, quoting evidence that profits were not as high as we were being told...we were accused of being Clinton-hating members of the VRWC, who just couldn't give the guy credit for doing ANYTHING right. To them I say "WE TOLD YOU SO."

On the other hand, when books are being cooked by by corporations with strong ties to the political left in order to bloat the price of their stock...bought and sold with virtual money...

When the political left in power has strong propaganda motive to convince the populace that the economy is great in SPITE of the evidence of said populace's pocketbooks...and when there really is no controlling legal authority over creative book-cooking, ESPECIALLY government book-cooking...

Is this news a surprise to anyone? Really?

[FormerLurker]

Hidden in the morass of statistics, there is proof the Clinton administration grossly overestimated the strength of the economy leading up to the 2000 election.

Being the fact that the Clinton administration lost track of 1.1 TRILLION dollars in FY 2000, I think it's a safe bet to say they fudged some numbers...

Rumsfeld Inherits Financial Mess (DOD loses 1.1 TRILLION)

COMPILATION OF THE FY 2000 DOD AGENCY-WIDE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

Well, it's not just THAT 1.1 TRILLION, there's also a few billion here, a few billion there that's missing as well...

Why Is $59 Billion Missing From HUD? Government Fails Fiscal-Fitness Test

[Credo]

Clinton had an aroma of corruption about him. In some ways he reminds me of the political version of Don King.