Fake Statistics for a Spectacular Recovery - Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

Aug 1, 2009 - headline:
U.S. Recession Worst Since Great Depression, Revised Data Show courtesy of Drudge and Bloomberg.

Behind the curtain and nearly un-reported was this boring July 31 news release from the Bureau of Economic Analysis at the Dept. of Commerce:

NATIONAL INCOME AND PRODUCT ACCOUNTS

GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT:  SECOND QUARTER 2009 (ADVANCE ESTIMATE)

COMPREHENSIVE REVISION:  1929 THROUGH FIRST QUARTER 2009

REVISED - All the economic data from the last 80 years has been revised; that's why the Recession was/is worse than previous reported (components re-weighted, in geekspeak). Gee, why? No answer. Gee, why now? No answer.

Permit me to make a cynical conjecture:

• All the data have been revised and their components re-weighted so that the likely path of this 2009-2012 recovery will appear more dramatic for the election purposes of the Democratic Party.
• The Bush-bits will be shown as worse than before and the Obama-bits will then resemble nothing so much as the Obamassiah himself - transcendent.
  
• The first step was to make the recession look worse.

Now the only thing that can go wrong is for the recovery to take an unexpected course . . . which is not all that unlikely.

The tip for this blog item came from economic analysis by Steven Hansen: http://seekingalpha.com/article/153061-the-great-recession-continues . Thanks to him.