Alter Economic Stats Again - No recession

[kach22i]

Does anyone have a record or score card on how many times the current administration has changed the way leading economic indicators are measured?

Below is all I could find (old), I know there have been threads anytime they have pulled the old shell game. I'm kind of waiting for just one more big change, so that the emperor can leave on a high note and effect the election.


There was this.....................back in 2004

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/showthread.php?t=180748&highlight=economy

Originally Posted by techweenie

Bush To Alter Economic Stats Again

Last week, the Census Bureau released statistics showing that for the first time in years, poverty had increased for three straight years, while the number of Americans without health care increased to a record level.1 But instead of changing its economic and health care policies, the Bush administration today is announcing plans to change the way the statistics are compiled. The move is just the latest in a series of actions by the White House to doctor or eliminate longstanding and nonpartisan economic data collection methods.

In a Bush administration press release yesterday, the Census Bureau said next week it "will announce a new economic indicator" as "an additional tool to better understand" the economy. The change in statistics is being directed by Bush political appointees and comes just 60 days from the election. It will be the first modification of Census data in 40 years.2

This is not the first time the White House has tried to doctor or manipulate economic data that exposed President Bush's failed policies. In the face of serious job losses last year, the Associated Press reported "the Bush administration has dropped the government's monthly report on mass layoffs, which also had been eliminated when President Bush's father was in office."3 Similarly, Business Week reported that the White House this year "unilaterally changed the start date of the last recession to benefit Bush's reelection bid." For almost 75 years, the start and end dates of recessions have been set by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a private nonpartisan research group. But the Bush administration decided to toss aside the NBER, and simply declare that the recession started under President Clinton.4


Sources:

1. "Census: Poverty up in 2003," The Olympian, 9/01/04.

2. Census Bureau press release, 8/31/04.

3. "Monthly report on mass layoffs dropped," Shawnee News-Star, 1/05/03.

4. "Inventing The 'Clinton Recession'," Business Week Online, 2/23/04.

Second comment; what do you all think of some of the Dem's proposing that more indicators which affect the middle class be included and less of Wall Street as an indicator of economic health?

[kach22i]

I've found one quote direct from the Whitehouse which is interesting - to me.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/pubpress/2007/111307_jec.html

The report released today by Democrats on the JEC is an unfortunate example of the Congressional leadership attempting to manipulate economic data for public relations purposes.

Of course data is just data until it's in the hands of someone with a goal or agenda.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316370,00.html

WASHINGTON — The White House has systematically tried to manipulate climate change science and minimize the dangers of global warming, asserts a Democratic congressional report issued after a 16-month investigation.

And if not one thing it's another.

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2007/11/republicans_to_democrats_take.html

This morning, the Democratic members of the Joint Economic Committee issued a report saying that the total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, taking into account veterans care, market disruptions, foregone investments and the costs of borrowing, could exceed $3.5 trillion over the next decade.

Now the Republican members of the panel want them to take it back.

....and it goes on and on.

From 2003
http://www.slate.com/id/2085481/

The administration muzzles routine economic information that's unfavorable. Last year, for example, the administration stopped issuing a monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report, known as the Mass Layoff Statistics program, that tracked factory closings throughout the country. The cancellation was made known on Christmas Eve in a footnote to the department's final report—a document that revealed 2,150 mass layoffs in November, cashiering nearly a quarter-million workers. The administration claimed the report was a victim of budget cuts. After the Washington Post happened to catch this bit of data suppression, the BLS report was reinstated. (Interestingly, President George H.W. Bush buried these same statistics in '92, also during a period of job losses. They were revived by President Clinton.)

The Bush economic team has snuffed its own reports when they reach conclusions that don't match the administration's rosy scenarios. The administration deep-sixed a study commissioned by then Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill that predicts huge budget deficits well into the future.

................The administration also muffled a customary report whose findings would have forced key corporate supporters to pay more to their employees. The annual Adverse Effect Wage Rate establishes..........

Another administration trick is playing with the length of its economic forecast periods, which puts the best possible face on bad news while exaggerating the projected benefits of its own initiatives. For example, to heighten the impression that Social Security is running out of money (thereby strengthening the case for allowing workers to divert money from the system into private retirement accounts), the administration has predicted shortfalls far in the future by relying on preposterously long forecast periods.

Many examples of manipulation in that last 2003 article , has to be something more current.

Is the press just tired out from reporting on all the other scandals?

[DaveE]

They probably have a hard to impossible task trying to pry the info from the Admin.

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by DaveE

They probably have a hard to impossible task trying to pry the info from the Admin.

Sin's of omission, looks like they just delay or cancel reports most of the time.