Get a Job!

Remember how it used to be during the George W. Bush years? The federal government would release reports with contrived or completely bogus information and liberals would scream foul. They would run around foaming at the mouth screaming, "This would NOT happen if a Democrat was in the White House!" So, they browbeat the American people and, behold, a Democrat now occupies the Oval Office. So, do you think bogus federal government reports are now a thing of the past?

Not at all, writes Paul Craig Roberts.

If we cannot trust what the government tells us about weapons of mass destruction, terrorist events, and the reasons for its wars and bailouts, can we trust the government’s statement last Friday that the US economy gained 151,000 payroll jobs during October?

Apparently not. After examining the government’s report, statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reported that the jobs were “phantom jobs” created by “concurrent seasonal factor adjustments.” In other words, the 151,000 jobs cannot be found in the unadjusted underlying data. The jobs were the product of seasonal adjustments concocted by the BLS.

As usual, the financial press did no investigation and simply reported the number handed to the media by the government.

The relevant information, the information that you need to know, is that the level of payroll employment today is below the level of 10 years ago. A smaller number of Americans are employed right now than were employed a decade ago.

Think about what that means. We have had a decade of work force growth from youngsters reaching working age and from immigration, legal and illegal, but there are fewer jobs available to accommodate a decade of work force entrants than before the decade began...

Situations such as this illustrate what has turned me from a political activist into a political cynic. It doesn't seem to matter which corporate party is in the driver's seat; one side is just as guilty as the other when it comes to fudging or overstating critical data. Even worse, the other side decries the efforts of manipulation and states unequivocally that, when they are in the driver's seat, such things would NEVER happen.

Yet, these things happen again and again and again.

It is no wonder that few Americans trust government anymore. Based on its track record, why should we?