My Tinfoil Hat

Jack Welch (former CEO of General Electric), Donald Trump (The Donald), Mort Zuckerman (Editor of U.S. News & World Report, owner of the N.Y. Daily News, and founder of Boston Properties), and most right-wing talk-show hosts believe that the recent favorable 7.8% unemployment rate is very suspicious ... thinking that the data has been somehow rigged.  However, I have not yet seen any of them (including the New York Times in two stories) who can point to a possible reason for this misfeasance ... except for myself (bedecked in my tinfoil hat) among a very few others. 

And this is because I have discovered an Obama political operative who has been running the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) since June 14th of this year and whom I suspect is the reason that the unemployment rate suddenly dropped below 8% ... a big political plus for The Barry one month before the Presidential election ... strangely serendipitous.  Her name is Erica Groshen.  None of the luminaries mentioned above seem to know of this coincidence.  Even a recent ABC story seems to think that the BLS is still under the control of apolitical bureaucrats ... see: ABC News Story.  Nonsense!

In order to show you how far off the reservation I have sidled (excuse me, Elizabeth Warren), let me direct you to two wingnut websites I have uncovered ... see: Freedumb Nation and Net Right Daily (please indulge me and read them both).  Although these sites do seem a little odd, they both give one an idea of how really far left this new head of the BLS seems to drop her Birkenstocks.  And, if you believe that her political bent would not cause her to "persuade" her direct reports to follow her lead to the most bizarre adjustment for BLS unemployment statistics in at least 29 years, then you don't understand "the Chicago way."

Fishy

For those who read this blog site regularly it is clear why the unemployment rate in the recent Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) release “unexpectedly” dropped to 7.8%. Since this statistic has become so politically sensitive, the Chicago-style of political gamesmanship is to “fix” the number, not the problem. So last March, Obama broke a long tradition and named one of his political operatives to head this government agency (see: Funny Business). So shortly after this hack was confirmed, U.S. employment numbers were suddenly revised upwards by 453 thousand. Now, the September official BLS release shows a phenomenal one month increase in employment by 873 thousand (the biggest one-month jump ever, see: BLS Release and click on the HTML version of the A-1 table under Monthly Household Data). Wow!! This comes at the same time that second quarter GNP growth was revised downward to 1.3%. Realistically, this two things can’t happen simultaneously.

Watch the Obama administration and its stenographers in the Main Stream Media blare these phony unemployment rates from the roof-tops and in 18-point agate type … and demean those who question these shenanigans. This is extremely fishy and stinks up this election cycle even more. It is really unfortunate that our government now feels privileged to manipulate such statistics for political gain.

The New Math

President Obama claimed yesterday that his administration has created over 4 million private-sector jobs over the last two years and 600,000 in the last three months ... see: Detroit News Article.  I realize that it is not playing fair to actually check on The Barry, but I have a compulsion for facts.  So once again I visited my favorite site for employment statistics: (the A-1 series at BLS.gov) .  And what do I find?  A little over two years ago, in January of 2010, there were 139.064 million Americans employed ... and, as of the most recent report, there were 142.034 million Americans employed.  This is an increase of 2.97 million ... not "over 4 million."  as claimed.  In the last three months the increase has been 1.24 million ... much better than Obama is claiming ... strange! Three things might explain these differences: 1) Obama is using non-seasonally-adjusted data, 2) there have been dramatic swings in government employment levels, or 3) he is, once again, prevaricating.

Nevertheless,  the United States employment in January of 2010 as a percent of the noninstitutional population was 58.5%  And at the end of March, 2012 it was exactly the same, 58.5%, so our President's job creation performance can be best described as treading water. We are spending billions, no trillions of dollars to create jobs in order for the anointed one to keep his crown ... all for naught.

I may be old fashioned but I think we ought not have naught to show for all this profligate spending.