Jul 31 2009
Is It Nineteen Eighty-Four Now?
Let’s just say I find it way too convenient that a report comes out just now is discovering for the first time that the economic recession was twice as worse than anyone thought (hasn’t that been the White House excuse for a lame stimulus bill for months now?):
The first 12 months of the U.S. recession saw the economy shrink more than twice as much as previously estimated, reflecting even bigger declines in consumer spending and housing, revised figures showed.
The world’s largest economy contracted 1.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the last three months of 2008, compared with the 0.8 percent drop previously on the books, the Commerce Department said today in Washington.
Why so long to fix the 2008 data? How do you miss that size of an economic contraction? We are over halfway through 2009, why was the Commerce Department not getting this news out in March?
Another item that has me smelling a PR set up job is the attempt to cloak this into some broader economic study  – by revising the 2001 recession data as well!
The revisions showed that the 2001 recession was less severe than originally estimated, reflecting a smaller decline in business investment. The economy actually grew 0.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2000 to the third quarter of 2001, erasing the 0.2 percent drop previously reported.
Are you telling me the Commerce Department has nothing better to do than revise 2000-2001 data? This is pure bureaucratic BS. Something fishy is going on here and I think I know what the next shoe to drop will be.
The Obama administration has been sitting on its 2nd quarter financial report for weeks now, hoping to delay the release until Health Care could get some votes. The reason being everyone knows the deficit numbers for 2009 are going to be jaw dropping.
So what better precursor to that bad news than to release a surprise report that says the 2008 phase was much worse than anyone knew (per Obama’s denial of responsibility), along with some rosy pretend numbers about the pending end of the dark tunnel:
Higher incomes and less spending translated into bigger savings. The savings rate for 2008 was revised up to 2.7 percent from 1.8 percent. The rate shot up to 5.2 percent in the second quarter, the highest level since 1998.
The government revised corporate profits down for 2006-2008 and up for 2004 and 2005.
Don’t we all feel richer and with bigger savings since the end of 2008! The report pretends this number shifting means the recession will end sooner than once predicted. What if they are half wrong on that one! What a crock. This stink of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
An interesting fact.
Tax Burden of Top 1% Now Exceeds That of Bottom 95%
by Scott A. Hodge
Newly released data from the IRS clearly debunks the conventional Beltway rhetoric that the “rich” are not paying their fair share of taxes.
Indeed, the IRS data shows that in 2007—the most recent data available—the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40.4 percent of the total income taxes collected by the federal government. This is the highest percentage in modern history. By contrast, the top 1 percent paid 24.8 percent of the income tax burden in 1987, the year following the 1986 tax reform act.
To put this in perspective, the top 1 percent is comprised of just 1.4 million taxpayers and they pay a larger share of the income tax burden now than the bottom 134 million taxpayers combined.
I seem recall, in “1984”, an announcer joyously proclaiming that the chocolate ration (which had been at 25 grams) had just been increased to 20 grams.
This seems to be the economic reporting we get today.
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