HOW THE GOVERNMENT IS USING A SHELL GAME TO FOOL YOU

Here's part of what Sen. Robert Bennett, chairman of the Joint Economics Committee, had to say on CNBC on Friday.

Bennett, a Republican, was discussing how he didn't believe the U.S. was bleeding jobs and that it was simply a calculation mistake, then he got off the topic.

"If you go back into the '90s and Alan Greenspan's examination of where the economy was, the productivity numbers that he was getting through traditional means all indicated productivity was down. And Greenspan gathered the economists . . . and the Fed together and said this cannot be right."

"They said, 'We are doing it the way we've always done it, so the numbers have to be right.' And [Greenspan] challenged them and said if you look at the other data they make it very clear that productivity has got to be going up.

"They went back and recalculated and discovered that their productivity numbers had been wrong for months if not years," Bennett concluded.

So, let me get this straight.

The Fed chairman doesn't like an economic statistic, so he tells some lowly economists to take a mulligan and do the calculations over. Amazingly, they discover exactly what the Fed wants them to discover - the politically important productivity miracle.

The Soviets had a habit of calculating their wheat crops in such a sloppy manner until the starving citizens wouldn't take it anymore.
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