Media Collaborators Flunk Economics

President Obama and his cadre of ideological clones have been doing somersaults, celebrating the government numbers on unemployment and economic growth.  The cheerleaders in the media have linked hands with the administration, performing journalistic handstands to mark the turnaround.

The coordinated attempt to brainwash voters in the final days of the presidential election is without precedent because it involves collusion with supposedly non-partisan government agencies. Skepticism about the federal data has been met with stinging administration rebukes.

Yet heading into October, most financial experts agreed the economy was comatose.  Leading indicators showed only a weak economic pulse. Then two government agencies released data on unemployment and expansion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that raised eyebrows.

The opening propaganda volley was fired by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reported the nation's unemployment rate inexplicably nosedived to 7.8 percent in September.  The turnabout occurred after 43 consecutive months of unemployment rates above eight percent. 

According to the statisticians, the economy added a staggering 873,000 jobs in a single month, following three months of stagnation. The jump was the nation's largest gain in workers in 29 years, despite little change in economic activity.  

Retired General Electric CEO Jack Welch was the first to challenge the data.  The president's Propaganda Minister Jay Carney and the media sheep tried to silence the former executive by ridiculing him for daring to suggest the numbers were cooked.

Welch had good reason to be skeptical.  The data appears at odds with reality.  The nation's plodding economic expansion does not explain the extraordinary job gains.

The bureau's glowing job numbers were based on in-person and telephone interviews of 60,000 households conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.  Households are selected in each state by the census organization to represent the entire country.  Each sample includes 75 percent of the same households that participated in the previous month's survey.

Surveys are notoriously flawed.  They depend entirely on the honesty of respondents and the accuracy of the interviewer in recording answers. In the aftermath of the unemployment drop, critics expressed concerns about the methodology.

They had grounds to question the veracity.
 
As part of each monthly report, government statisticians at the bureau also examine the actual payrolls of 141,000 businesses.  In September, the inspection found 114,000 jobs were added.  That is a discrepancy of more than 600,000 jobs between the payroll data and the household interviews.

No plausible explanation has been forthcoming from the media or the government statisticians.  It is further evidence that the media has abdicated its role as government watchdog to avoid spoiling the president's reelection chances.  The media and the administration had one more trick up their sleeves.

Last week the Commerce Department issued an "estimate" showing growth of 2.0 percent in the third quarter for the GDP, a measurement of the goods and services produced by the nation's economy. The Obama Administration backflipped and the media cartwheeled.

The improvement surprised the nation's top economists.  In a survey of 48 financial experts, their consensus was the economy would grow by 1.8 percent, according to the USA Today.  For the second quarter, the GDP growth had been an unimpressive 1.3 percent.

There was a a little noticed nugget buried in the commerce report. Most of the growth could be attributed to federal government spending, which rose 9.6 percent in the third quarter after tumbling 0.2 percent in the second quarter.  Surely that wasn't a coincidence.    

In addition, not a single media outlet called attention to the cautionary language contained in the department's report, which emphasized the third quarter figures were an "advance estimate based on source data that are incomplete or subject to further revision."

Isn't it convenient, too, that revised figures with more complete data will not be released until November 29, some 23 days after the election?     

Yet Americans are supposed to trust the media when it claims the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Commerce Department are beyond rapprochement.  Really?   Government data is constantly being updated to correct figures already in the public domain.

As a recent example, the press breathlessly proclaimed that jobless claims fell to 342,000 for the week ended October 13, marking the lowest number since February of 2008.  Long after the news grabbed headlines, the Labor Department quietly corrected the figure by raising it to 388,000.    

A democracy demands a vigilant and impartial media.  The United States has neither.