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Federal Government Cooking the Books
Disclosure: I believe this kind of deception has been going on for a long, long time ( 30 plus years )Read the whole thing to get the full flavor What puzzles me is that with such large numbers of people without jobs or adequate jobs, how can retail sales continue to hold their own? If people still had their house ATM or were increasing their credit card debt, I could see how they could keep spending at pre-recession levels. But people are paying down debt, not increasing it. Something just doesn't jibe IMO. With the current job situation, I would expect to see retail sales at something like 90% of the bubble years sales. Do you have any retail sales data that verifies the stress in the employment situation? Sunny Jim Reply To Sunny Jim Sunny Jim Retail sales are not what they seem I have written about this before but not enough. The published numbers are based on "same store sales". Think about all the companies that have gone bankrupt. Take Circuit City for an example. Gone. The doors are closed. Some of those shoppers went to Best Buy where same store sales rose. Also remember that Best Buy and many other chains closed weak stores. The result: same store sales went up again. Government methodology for reporting retail sales is based on sampling stores in existence. It does not factor in stores not in existence but recently were. Nor does it handle closed stores even when the chain is still doing business. Government reporting of retail sales is fatally flawed. As an aside, this blog is my daily must-read on the economy. No agenda, no politics except to display some of the fiscal insanity being perpetrated. You may not agree with his conclusions but you can never say he is bullsh*tting you. No one I knows gets a dime for this endorsement, including this poster Posted by: badanov 2010-02-28 |
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