Lily Tomlin, the actress and comedienne said: "No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up". She's also quoted as saying: "the best mind-altering drug is truth". The truth is a powerful drug that is all natural, and safe when used as directed. However, the "official, opinionated-truth" that comes from Washington and is sanctioned by the major media, often bears little or no resemblance to the real, fact-based truth, that emerges after the headlines have been written and forgotten. In other words, what we're told is true "in the moment" often turns out "not to be true" days, weeks or months later, when official reports are revised with little or no public fanfare.
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In the moment, these misrepresentations are called "spin" or "perception management". Some people are quite forgiving of this kind of lie because they view it as a "political sport" that they think everyone is doing. Since when does everyone supposedly doing something make it right? The cumulative effect of this kind of "political sport" has created a moral hazard that is now sewn into our entire financial system. We have an entire class of political and financial elites who really believe that "perception is reality". They believe that if they can manage everyone's expectations with half truths, skewed statistics and outright lies, that they can transform reality from what it really is, into what they want it to be - and keep the truth from you in the process.
It's the game of trying to outrun reality. It works for a while, sometimes for years or decades, and then people actually forget it's a game. They even teach their children it's real. Professors teach their students its real. Soon, a significant number of people actually believe that perception is reality. They believe the economy is what we say it is, regardless of the underlying facts. They forget that when "perception" is the process of continuous spin and fabrication, the entire system, and everything built upon it, is unsustainable. And that's where we are today.
Case in point: The Bureau of Labor Statistics just released a report claiming job losses of only 20,000 people in January. My crap detector tells me they're full of it. In 2009, the BLS under-reported job losses by almost 500,000. In other words, they had to revise job losses up by half a million people because of their skewed reporting. In 2008, they under-reported job losses by a whopping 930,000 and had to revise job losses up by nearly a million people. Why these huge revisions? The BLS uses a "survey method" of employees, not an actual count. Surveys can be fudged, managed and spun into whatever numbers are politically beneficial "in the moment". Headlines can be influenced. Markets can be managed. People can be fooled into thinking the economy is on the mend when the opposite is true. The BLS is definitely on the perception side of the equation
On the reality side of the equation, TrimTabs Investment Research performs their own employment analysis, which uses real-time daily income tax deposits from all U.S. taxpayers to compute employment growth. Not a survey. They got it right in 2009. In fact the BLS revised their numbers to more closely match those of TrimTabs, after the fact.
Everyone from the President on down is touting what I believe to be the bogus estimate of 20,000 jobs lost and a 9.7% unemployment rate. Why do I say it's bogus? Because TrimTabs results for January showed 104,000 jobs lost. 5 times the official numbers. Mark my word, in several months, the 20,000 job loss estimate will be revised UP to more closely match the more realistic and fact based number of 104,000.
Like Lily Tomlin says: "no matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up". And for good reason.
It's the game of trying to outrun reality. It works for a while, sometimes for years or decades, and then people actually forget it's a game. They even teach their children it's real. Professors teach their students its real. Soon, a significant number of people actually believe that perception is reality. They believe the economy is what we say it is, regardless of the underlying facts. They forget that when "perception" is the process of continuous spin and fabrication, the entire system, and everything built upon it, is unsustainable. And that's where we are today.
Case in point: The Bureau of Labor Statistics just released a report claiming job losses of only 20,000 people in January. My crap detector tells me they're full of it. In 2009, the BLS under-reported job losses by almost 500,000. In other words, they had to revise job losses up by half a million people because of their skewed reporting. In 2008, they under-reported job losses by a whopping 930,000 and had to revise job losses up by nearly a million people. Why these huge revisions? The BLS uses a "survey method" of employees, not an actual count. Surveys can be fudged, managed and spun into whatever numbers are politically beneficial "in the moment". Headlines can be influenced. Markets can be managed. People can be fooled into thinking the economy is on the mend when the opposite is true. The BLS is definitely on the perception side of the equation
On the reality side of the equation, TrimTabs Investment Research performs their own employment analysis, which uses real-time daily income tax deposits from all U.S. taxpayers to compute employment growth. Not a survey. They got it right in 2009. In fact the BLS revised their numbers to more closely match those of TrimTabs, after the fact.
Everyone from the President on down is touting what I believe to be the bogus estimate of 20,000 jobs lost and a 9.7% unemployment rate. Why do I say it's bogus? Because TrimTabs results for January showed 104,000 jobs lost. 5 times the official numbers. Mark my word, in several months, the 20,000 job loss estimate will be revised UP to more closely match the more realistic and fact based number of 104,000.
Like Lily Tomlin says: "no matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up". And for good reason.
