New site -- "Shadow Government Statistics"

[idlisambar]

For Papau and other government statistics watchers this site may be of interest. A fellow by the name of Walter J. "John" Williams is behind the analysis, and he runs a newsletter that can be ordered by subscription (the subscription fee is not cheap unfortunately). However, there are a few free articles that might be of interest...

http://www.gillespieresearch.com/cgi-bin/bgn/

08/24/04 Series Master Introduction
08/24/04 Employment and Unemployment Reporting
09/07/04 Federal Deficit Reality
09/22/04 The Consumer Price Index
10/06/04 Gross Domestic Product

Most interesting of the three to me is the Consumer Price Index article, in which he claims that about changes to the CPI in the last couple of decades have reduced it by 2.7%. If correct that would mean that the U.S. GDP growth in the last few years has been around 1% by the old standards. The 2.7% figure is larger than a lot of other estimates I have seen and should be taken with a grain of salt, but in my opinion a figure of this magnitude is not out of the question -- if true it would explain the "jobless recovery" paradoxes of the early 90's and now, and it would explain why European and Japanese GDP figures have been anemic compared to our figures, even though there is little indication that our relative living standards have improved.

[papau]

1. thanks for the link!

:-)

[papau]

2. Consumer Price Index reduction in the studies I've heard about was

1.2% and 0.5% on the quality improvement/replacement within category and change in calculation method under Bush.

I get confused as to what is "chained" and what is not, and what is an in category replacement and what is not - and let us not even discuss quality improvement.

2.7% seems high as a fudge factor subtraction - it will be interesting to read what he has to say

[oecher3]

3. yes, thanks...

agree with papau, 2.7% sounds high, but not surprising nor unlikely. :D

[54anickel]

4. They have featured his articles several times over at the

Prudent Bear site. I've posted them in the SMW thread in the past, and had recently wanted to reference back to them - but lost my bookmarks and couldn't find them in the archives.

Thanks for the link.