Damn Lies and Government Statistics

The stated purpose of requiring publicly traded companies to report their earnings every fiscal quarter/year is to keep investors informed of the company’s status, but the way wall street games the reports makes you think the gaming is the real reason. Microsoft is famous for low balling expectations in advance of a report. They do this without causing a sell off and then they blow the cover off the low balled expectations.

Most companies are not as good or aggressive as Mr. Softie, so they would only low ball by a penny and then break out their party hats to celebrate beating the street by a penny on the fateful day. Beat the Street by a penny used to be a refrain in the bubble blowing days of recent yore. Of course no one ever asked the question: who keeps the penny?

It’s bad enough for a company you’ve invested your money in to game you when it reports, but arguably worse for your government to game you with your own money directly. Make no mistake about it: when the Labor Department proclaimed that “new jobless claims fell more than expected last week,” it was a direct attempt to game you into believing things are better than they appear. Lets say that after your airliner goes into a spinning nose dive for a few minutes, the pilot crackles over the intercom and says “folks, in that last minute we fell less than expected. Now you can relax.”

New jobless claims fell more than expected last week but are stuck at elevated levels, while the number of people continuing to receive unemployment insurance approached 6 million, setting a record for the 10th straight week.

The government data released Thursday bolster recent projections from the Federal Reserve and private economists that the nation’s job market will remain weak into next year as companies purge thousands more workers.

The Labor Department said the tally of initial jobless claims fell to a seasonally adjusted 654,000, down from a revised 674,000 the previous week. Analysts expected claims to drop to 660,000.

Yeah, stated expectations are cheap, but the U3, or official unemployment rate of 8.5%, is an outright lie.

The official unemployment number is known as U-3. It does not count discouraged workers, marginally attached workers, or those working part time for economic reasons. The BLS highlights those other numbers in Table A-12. 

And that number in Table A-12 is U6 at 15.6%. You see, the government can keep good data and do valid statistics. It just can’t report them that way.

The scam get worse, and Mish has revealed the grim details. Warning: read at your own risk. My stomach felt like it was in a nose dive.

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