Economy

The government claims the unemployment rate dropped from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent in one month. Baloney. Obama's cronies manipulated these numbers even more than usual to cover his terrible debate performance and give him a boost going into the election. Here's the last line of the article.

"A broader measure of unemployment—which includes job seekers as well as those in part-time jobs--held steady at 14.7% in September. "

Those two numbers can't both be true.

The stock market hit a five year high on the unemployment news. Isn't that rosy for the president. It's all a crock. The stock market is up because Ben Bernanke is printing an unending supply of counterfeit money to prop it up. This is all corrupt manipulation of the numbers.

Republicans are right: this is a manufactured October surprise. I'm sure Obama, Geithner and Bernanke have been planning it for months or longer.

""It appears that Obama has hired infamous Iraqi Information Minister Baghdad Bob to calculate the unemployment rate. Anyone who takes this unemployment report serious is either naïve or a paid Obama campaign adviser," Americans for Limited Government, a conservative group, said in a statement this morning. "

I agree. I guess it is possible over a million people dropped out of the work force. The Washington Post claims that the drop was not caused by workers dropping out of the work force like previous drops have been, so this number is just a lie. UPI reports people did drop out of the work force.

"The drop from 8.1 percent was made possible by the addition of 114,000 jobs in the month and the subtraction of 456,000 people from the workforce.
That figure is critical because 342,00 more people dropped out of the work force than found jobs."

This is terrible news, not good news like Obama pretends.

Here's the government employment summary. This confirms UPI's report:

"The unemployment rate decreased to 7.8 percent in September, and total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 114,000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today."

and,

"The number of unemployed persons, at 12.1 million, decreased by 456,000 in September."

But later it contradicts these numbers,

"The civilian labor force rose by 418,000 to 155.1 million in September, while the labor force participation rate was little changed at 63.6 percent."

So again, these things cannot all be true. They contradict each other. This report is a fraud. I understand they collect data through different methods, but that just makes the fraud easier.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is on the defensive, claiming there is no conspiracy to manipulate the numbers. What else would they say? Did you expect them to a conspiracy?

"In fact, the BLS says it does not at the moment have a single political appointee working in the entire agency."

So they're unaccountable to the people? How is that good for us? Those people can be fired.

"Haugen explained that one factor that likely led to the 0.3 percent drop in this month's unemployment is the fact that people in the 20-24 age group (including college students and people who are often working temporary summer jobs) left the job market this summer earlier than expected.
"In August you had an unusually large decline in employment" among that demographic, he said. Because the BLS does seasonal adjustments for its data, it was primed for a big decline in September, when young people have traditionally left the work force. "What happened was there was a big decline in August and not a decline in September. Because there was no decline [when it was expected] there's a big increase after seasonal adjustment.""

So now he's blaming it on the inaccuracy of the season adjustment. He wants us to believe it's pure coincidence that this year, for some unknown reason, young people left summer employment early just in time to make the unemployment rate look improved in the last report before the election. This is looking more and more corrupt to me.

""What we tell people is that you need to wait for additional months of data in order to see what the pattern is.""

So he intends to adjust the rate after the election. How convenient for Obama. I doubt this will have much effect on the election. Conventional wisdom says that people make up their minds about the economy during the summer before the election. I believe people believe their eyes more than government numbers. I doubt anybody out there was planning to vote for Romney because the official employment rate was 8.1 percent, but will now switch their vote because the official rate fell to 7.8 percent.

More people are forced to defend these bogus numbers, claiming there is no conspiracy. I love this. It's about time the American people started calling bull**** on everything government tells us.

""Bollocks,"' Wharton School economist Justin Wolfers said. "Once you understand how the numbers are collected and processed, you understand that it's literally impossible to fool with the numbers.''"

Fortunately for us, we can put this to the test. Let's see if these numbers stand the test of time. I predict they will be revised down after the election.

"Manipulating the unemployment rate would require the cooperation of thousands of people -- not to mention violating federal laws."

It might violate federal law, but the government violates federal law constantly, and Obama is the most lawless president in my lifetime. And I don't believe it would be that hard to fudge the numbers. All it would take was some non-random polling. For example, if the household survey just happened to survey more homes where young people quit work for the summer earlier than is typical, you might get exactly the result the BLS bureaucrat describes above. But to me the most important aspect of this controversy is people are finally beginning to distrust even the most mundane government reports as they always should have.