DU hypocrites? Including frank's evil twin Atman?

[ChuckJ]

Someone on here mentioned that the DUmmies hate the question concerning whether you are better off now than you were four years ago. The DUmmies try to pretend that everything now is better off than under W. Both of those things kind of urged me to do some research. Knowing how the economy and unemployment is under BamBam AND knowing how the economy and unemployment was under W I decided to check out the DUmmies' opinions of thing under W.

I cam across this from Atman from April of 2006. hypo-link

Atman   (1000+ posts)             Mon Apr-03-06 10:05 AM
Original message

"Shadowstats" - Real Unemployment 12%, real CPI 8%. We're in a RECESSION.
   
Shadow Statistics
by Jim Sinclair

You're bombarded with all those statistics that pour out of Washington, the ones that appear to show how unemployment and inflation are low, GDP is expanding, and so on. They may not square with your personal experience, but after all, the government pays a lot of people with fancy degrees a lot of money to carefully track economic statistics. So you figure the numbers must be somewhat accurate.

But now a man has come out of the woodwork who's done the real math and properly crunched all the numbers. His conclusion: "If the numbers don't seem real to the man in the street--they probably aren't."

<snip>

Has he ever. What Williams does (and few others bother to do) is read the fine print. The government, he notes in a recent interview with Kathryn Welling of the welling@weeden investment newsletter, "is very honest in terms of disclosing what it does. It always footnotes the changes and provides all the fine details." It is in those details--no surprise--that the devil lies.

"What has happened over time," Williams says, "is that the methodologies employed to create the widely followed series, such as ... the GDP, the CPI, the employment numbers, all have had biases built into them that result in overstating economic growth and understating inflation."

"Real unemployment right now--figured the way that the average person thinks of unemployment, meaning figured the way it was estimated back during the Great Depression--is running about 12%. Real CPI right now is running at about 8%. And the real GDP is probably in contraction. I venture that if you talked about those numbers now with the average person, they would say that they seem reasonable ... my work shows that the economic perceptions of non-professionals actually have some real validity; there are in fact reasons for the disconnect between official statistics and what the populace is feeling."

Link to the article above Scroll down a few posts.

-------

Also, from the current edition of Gillespie's subscriber-only newsletter at ShadowStats:

Quote
• March 2006 Edition subscription required (Mar. 15)
In general, the broad economic outlook has not changed. Since the beginning of 2005 a number of key indicators have been nearing or at their fail-safe points, with four indicators moving beyond those levels, signaling a recession. Once beyond their fail-safe points, these indicators have never sent out false alarms, either for an economic boom or bust. The 2005 to 2007 inflationary recession showed signs of deepening in the latest reporting. Monthly data show plunging new orders for durable goods and contracting industrial production, retail sales, help-wanted advertising, real average weekly earnings and consumer confidence. Consumer credit growth also remained sub-par. As to inflation, both the CPI and PPI topped expectations, and oil prices have remained strong. Also published recently were the full trade data for 2005. Based on fourth-quarter GDP, net exports and employment data, the U.S. trade deficit has cost 8.8 million jobs over time, with 800,000 jobs lost in 2005, alone.

(edited for a more compelling subject line!)

Then Atman bumped it himself with some input.

Atman   (1000+ posts)             Mon Apr-03-06 01:59 PM
Response to Original message

19. afternoon kick
   
If for no other reason than this is good meat to show your republican "friends" who keep claiming the economy is going great guns, and believing BushCo's bullshit about a 5% unemployment rate.

So if I'm reading this correctly, in Atman's mind the reported unemployment rate is 'bullshit' and 5% is bad because the actual rate is higher than the reported rate.

Now let's fast forward to 2012.  hypo-link

Someone posts the unemployment number.

Laura PourMeADrink (12,275 posts)

Breaking on CNBC: Unemployment Ticks up to 8.3%

that 8.3% number will be more fuel for RobMe - Bad for Obama

Good News: 163,000 jobs added....

And what does Atman say?

Atman (24,556 posts)

5. It's not "bad"

It means more people are entering the work force again.

Now the OP seems to be asking if the uptick in unemployment to 8.3% is bad. Atman seems to be saying it's not bad.  5%<8.3% except in DUmmieland?

There's a lot of good stuff to be found if you guys want to check it out.

Here are links to the DUmps opinions on unemployment between January 1, 2001 and September 29, 2006: Unemployment links

Here are links to their opinions on the economy during the same time period: Economy links

I picked that time frame because I wanted to the time period to be before the dems took over congress and began 'fixing' things.

And frank's opinion concerning Atman:

Actually, surfer-boy wants to say a lot, but Skins imposed that word-of-mouth, unwritten, rule on the primitives a few months ago.

My fellow alum had at first, when DU3 was new, relented, and allowed mention of conservativecave and the DUmpster on Skins' island.  But then he regretted it, and rescinded it, but as he didn't want decent and civilized people to know it was a rule now, it was spread by primitive communication, rather than publicly stated.

My pal Atman won't come over here, and he's vexed that he can't answer us over there.

Too bad for surfer-boy Pedro Picasso; too bad for the primitives.

[Freeper]

I'm glad you brought this up. I am sure many of us here have not forgotten how 5% unemployment under Bush was record depression levels, then fast forward to 2012 and unemployment drops to 8.1% and that was record lows.

Same with the gas prices in 2007 gas prices were horrible and all the fault of the president, in 2012 gas prices aren't so bad and besides 0bama can't do anything about them anyway.

I know who the campaign ads from 0bama are aimed at, the people who are stupid enough to believe that 0bama has done great things for us, and they all post at DU.

[franksolich]

Good find, great find!

[Skul]

Pedro needs to use his superb math skills and tell us what the real rate is.....today.

[BadCat]

That's as good as finding the OmahaSteve post touting $1.89 gasoline under President Bush, and thinking it was a travesty.

[Splashdown]

Hypocrasy? from Dems? The hell you say!

[Freeper]

Hypocrasy? from Dems? The hell you say!

There should be crickets in the 2012 picture. 

[sybilll]

There should be crickets in the 2012 picture. 

And an empty chair

[Freeper]

And an empty chair

Bazinga!

 

[franksolich]

Oh damn.

Damn, damn, damn.

I thought I was responding to ChuckJ's original comment, but in fact I was modifying it.

Too late.

Sorry about that, Chuck.

Damn.

[franksolich]

Whew.  I snatched it back from cyberspace.

This is ChuckJ's original comment:

- - - - - - - - - -

Someone on here mentioned that the DUmmies hate the question concerning whether you are better off now than you were four years ago. The DUmmies try to pretend that everything now is better off than under W. Both of those things kind of urged me to do some research. Knowing how the economy and unemployment is under BamBam AND knowing how the economy and unemployment was under W I decided to check out the DUmmies' opinions of thing under W.

I cam across this from Atman from April of 2006. hypo-link

Atman   (1000+ posts)             Mon Apr-03-06 10:05 AM
Original message

"Shadowstats" - Real Unemployment 12%, real CPI 8%. We're in a RECESSION.
   
Shadow Statistics
by Jim Sinclair

You're bombarded with all those statistics that pour out of Washington, the ones that appear to show how unemployment and inflation are low, GDP is expanding, and so on. They may not square with your personal experience, but after all, the government pays a lot of people with fancy degrees a lot of money to carefully track economic statistics. So you figure the numbers must be somewhat accurate.

But now a man has come out of the woodwork who's done the real math and properly crunched all the numbers. His conclusion: "If the numbers don't seem real to the man in the street--they probably aren't."

<snip>

Has he ever. What Williams does (and few others bother to do) is read the fine print. The government, he notes in a recent interview with Kathryn Welling of the welling@weeden investment newsletter, "is very honest in terms of disclosing what it does. It always footnotes the changes and provides all the fine details." It is in those details--no surprise--that the devil lies.

"What has happened over time," Williams says, "is that the methodologies employed to create the widely followed series, such as ... the GDP, the CPI, the employment numbers, all have had biases built into them that result in overstating economic growth and understating inflation."

"Real unemployment right now--figured the way that the average person thinks of unemployment, meaning figured the way it was estimated back during the Great Depression--is running about 12%. Real CPI right now is running at about 8%. And the real GDP is probably in contraction. I venture that if you talked about those numbers now with the average person, they would say that they seem reasonable ... my work shows that the economic perceptions of non-professionals actually have some real validity; there are in fact reasons for the disconnect between official statistics and what the populace is feeling."

Link to the article above Scroll down a few posts.

-------

Also, from the current edition of Gillespie's subscriber-only newsletter at ShadowStats:

• March 2006 Edition subscription required (Mar. 15)
In general, the broad economic outlook has not changed. Since the beginning of 2005 a number of key indicators have been nearing or at their fail-safe points, with four indicators moving beyond those levels, signaling a recession. Once beyond their fail-safe points, these indicators have never sent out false alarms, either for an economic boom or bust. The 2005 to 2007 inflationary recession showed signs of deepening in the latest reporting. Monthly data show plunging new orders for durable goods and contracting industrial production, retail sales, help-wanted advertising, real average weekly earnings and consumer confidence. Consumer credit growth also remained sub-par. As to inflation, both the CPI and PPI topped expectations, and oil prices have remained strong. Also published recently were the full trade data for 2005. Based on fourth-quarter GDP, net exports and employment data, the U.S. trade deficit has cost 8.8 million jobs over time, with 800,000 jobs lost in 2005, alone.

(edited for a more compelling subject line!)

Then Atman bumped it himself with some input.

Atman   (1000+ posts)             Mon Apr-03-06 01:59 PM
Response to Original message

19. afternoon kick
   
If for no other reason than this is good meat to show your republican "friends" who keep claiming the economy is going great guns, and believing BushCo's bullshit about a 5% unemployment rate.

So if I'm reading this correctly, in Atman's mind the reported unemployment rate is 'bullshit' and 5% is bad because the actual rate is higher than the reported rate.

Now let's fast forward to 2012.  hypo-link

Someone posts the unemployment number.

Laura PourMeADrink (12,275 posts)

Breaking on CNBC: Unemployment Ticks up to 8.3%

that 8.3% number will be more fuel for RobMe - Bad for Obama

Good News: 163,000 jobs added....

And what does Atman say?

Atman (24,556 posts)

5. It's not "bad"

It means more people are entering the work force again.

Now the OP seems to be asking if the uptick in unemployment to 8.3% is bad. Atman seems to be saying it's not bad.  5%<8.3% except in DUmmieland?

There's a lot of good stuff to be found if you guys want to check it out.

Here are links to the DUmps opinions on unemployment between January 1, 2001 and September 29, 2006: Unemployment links

Here are links to their opinions on the economy during the same time period: Economy links

I picked that time frame because I wanted to the time period to be before the dems took over congress and began 'fixing' things.

[USA4ME]

SOP for Pedro and the other primitives.  When the stats might make it bad on your opposition, point it out.  When those same stats make it bad on your choice, claim it's a lie.

Bubble-boy Rob McGrath is an top-notch, certifiable, A1A idiot and liar.

.

[obumazombie]

Next stop at DU, intellectual honesty. I'll pack a lunch.

[ChuckJ]

note: ChuckJ made a most impressive topic here.

franksolich wanted to comment upon it.

But then franksolich hit his superduper moderator "modify" button, and instead of his comment showing up as a comment, it deleted ChuckJ's topic and replaced it with franksolich's comment.

Ooops.

This happened once before, years ago, when franksolich did the same thing to something GOBUCKS posted about Pamela, the then-greenbriar primitive.  In that case, GOBUCKS' original comment couldn't be retrieved, but at least happily in this case, ChuckJ's original comment was retrieved, and it's further on down in this thread.

My apologies to my good friend ChuckJ, and to all the decent and civilized people of conservativecave who might find this thread confusing.  The fault is wholly mine.

Don't worry about frank. No apologies are necessary.

[franksolich]

Don't worry about frank. No apologies are necessary.

Whew.

I'm sorry the links didn't come through--I tried, though--but I was hoping it was okay despite that, because quite obviously your main point was to illustrate the contradictions of the primitives, in this case my evil twin, and that came through loud and clear even with no links.

[ChuckJ]

Whew.

I'm sorry the links didn't come through--I tried, though--but I was hoping it was okay despite that, because quite obviously your main point was to illustrate the contradictions of the primitives, in this case my evil twin, and that came through loud and clear even with no links.

I probably have the links on my computer. I'll check and add them back this afternoon if so.