Study: U.S. Economic Status: Again, #1 in the World

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Of course they wont hear of it. It came from a conservative source, therefore it is wrong.

If this is the case and this is the economy (USA) in the best shape as bad as it is, the rest of the world must be royally SC****D!

Or, perhaps, there are areas that have already begun to unplug from the Globalism/Fossil Fuel Matrix and now are not showing on the economic radar. One can always hope . . .

*Cough*

Yeah, the economy is doing just peachy . That's why the american dollar has plummeted, the national debt has grown from 4 to 9 trillion dollars and counting, and over 2 million jobs have disappeared in the last three years. And why Bush's administration has started to play coy with its economic reports.

Seriously, at what point do you start calling something a recession?

Presidential Contributions to Debt

No more excuses on jobs

Bush hides bad economic news

Yet there are tens of millions of Americans who can't afford healthcare and people have to work 2 or even 3 jobs to make ends meet. GDP numbers are worthless unless they are put into the context of wealth disparity. The American middle class is dying and the gap between the haves and the have-nots is starting to look like that of Latin American banana republics, almost all the wealth is going to the richest 5%. Oh, and the government's economics figures, GDP growth included, are "cooked" with fancy accounting tricks to look better then they really are.

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data

Official GDP growth numbers vs. the real numbers:


Official inflation rate vs. real inflation rate:


Unemployment:


GDP growth is -2%, the inflation is nearly 12%, and the real unemployment rate is 13%.


Healthy economy my ass. The economy has been contracting almost steadily since 2000. Were aren't in a recession, we are in a DEPRESSION!

And compared to all other countries?

Odin:
While much as I love to get emotional about statistics I read on the internet, as a non-economist I can only ask
1) Are there any good impartial evaluations of shadowstats that should cause me to give it any credence, and
2) What makes John Williams more trustworthy than the scores of economists who say that the recession is mild if existent?

A butt load (like nearly all) of the so called evidence for a recession that I actually hear is BS anecdotal sensationalist journalism so forgive me if at this point I'm knee jerk skeptical of doom and gloom forecasters of all stripes.

Odin: I've heard of ShadowStats (too much of a cheapskate to purchase access though) and I was wondering: have you examined his methodology and why his numbers are different from the government numbers? Does he publish his calculation methods as compared to the government's? Where does he get his information?

The -2% GDP growth might be somewhat feasible, but the other numbers seem way off. We simply haven't seen price inflation at the levels he's claimed. Consumer goods are getting more expensive, but if it were occurring at the rate your chart indicates people would be taking a lot more notice. And the unemployment figures are almost certainly wrong. That high a level of unemployment is practically at depression level.

Really, it seems as though Williams goes out of his way to make the stats seem as bad as possible. Not to say the government doesn't fudge numbers to make them look better, but I would like to see some solid reasons why I should accept the numbers put forward by one rogue economist. If you haven't examined his methodology and judged it more correct than other methods, you are just cherry-picking data to match your preconceived ideological viewpoint.