I was preparing the 2009 version of "Real GDP is Decreasing", and I noticed something that made me say "WTF? Shenanigans!"
As part of that post, I use M2 as published by the Federal Reserve. I updated my Excel spreadsheet for 2009, and I noticed something bizarre. All the values changed!
| Year | Raw M2 (Mar 2010) | Raw M2 (Mar 2009) | % diff |
| 1990-Jan. | 3176.2 | 3176.6 | -0.01% |
| 1991-Jan. | 3294.3 | 3296 | -0.05% |
| 1992-Jan. | 3387.7 | 3389.7 | -0.06% |
| 1993-Jan. | 3429.1 | 3431.5 | -0.07% |
| 1994-Jan. | 3486.8 | 3489.6 | -0.08% |
| 1995-Jan. | 3504.8 | 3508.7 | -0.11% |
| 1996-Jan. | 3662 | 3665 | -0.08% |
| 1997-Jan. | 3838.1 | 3842.5 | -0.11% |
| 1998-Jan. | 4062.2 | 4068.2 | -0.15% |
| 1999-Jan. | 4407.8 | 4416.9 | -0.21% |
| 2000-Jan. | 4671.3 | 4680.5 | -0.20% |
| 2001-Jan. | 4975 | 4981.6 | -0.13% |
| 2002-Jan. | 5458.8 | 5458.5 | 0.01% |
| 2003-Jan. | 5803.7 | 5798.2 | 0.09% |
| 2004-Jan. | 6061.6 | 6058.6 | 0.05% |
| 2005-Jan. | 6401.3 | 6408.4 | -0.11% |
| 2006-Jan. | 6701 | 6705.8 | -0.07% |
| 2007-Jan. | 7099.6 | 7056.3 | 0.61% |
| 2008-Jan. | 7529.1 | 7484.4 | 0.60% |
| 2009-Jan. | 8296.9 | 8224.4 | 0.88% |
| 2010-Jan. | 8452.3 |
WTF is up with that? I could understand them adjusting the 2009 value or even the 2008 value. Why did they change every value all the way back to 1990? Why wasn't there a footnote explaining the change? That was the "raw M2" column, with no seasonal adjustment?
It's only a 1% difference. Still, I'm disturbed that the numbers changed. Why did they change?
The Jan 2010 value is suspiciously low. I expected it would be a lot higher. Can you trust statistics published by State bureaucrats?
I also checked the raw GDP numbers. They also changed all of them, all the way back to 1990! This is raw GDP (no inflation adjustment). WTF is up with that?
Are State bureaucrats just making up whatever numbers they feel like? Then, if the lies aren't believable anymore, they retroactively change them?
3 comments:
This is very off-topic, but I want to know why:
1) State employees get paid overtime, when they do it, but employees of companies don't get paid overtime. When I used to work for software companies, I regularly worked 50 - 60 hour weeks. Typically 10 - 20 hours overtime for free. As I never directly worked for banks, a high regular wage never compensated me even indirectly for the work.
2) State employees get generous pensions even when they retire when still relatively young. For example Lord Mandelson gets a pension from the European Union when he left his job as an EU commissioner. He now works as an unelected minister in the UK government.
3) State and local council employees get index-linked, gold-plated pensions. Regular workers get nothing. Basically a regular worker gets no pension but pays tax, which goes to providing generous pensions for State employees. Sometimes a State employee will leave a job, get a generous redundancy payment and then take another State job. Talk about double-dipping!
The answer is "The State pays its thugs well." Most State employees are indirectly or directly facilitating evil.
Plus, most well-paying State jobs are not available to everyone. Insiders get advantages.
"Garbage collector" is a relatively high-paying low-skill job. They don't advertise to the general public. You need an insider connection to get that job.
As another example, in NY, a State employee fired for fraud still collects his pension.
George Orwell predicted this in "1984". It seems that he was only off by 26 years. ;)
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