Retail Sales: Media Lies and Incompetence (CNBC: Liars All)

It is not jsut weekly an dmonthly employment numbers about which the meida LIE. Remember "Black Friday", and all of those reportes abut MASSIVE increases in Christmas season sales? There were media reports talknig about inceases of 30 or 40 PERCENT. Thease were basically MEANGINGLWESS NUMBERS. And the media does it EVERY YEAR. They LIE every year. Yep. I just called the people of CNBC LIARS, and they represent themselves to be "experts". Christmas sales are almost always "mddiling", and these reports of massive sales increases were a LIE.


It is really the same type of LIE represented by the reporting of employment numbres (see previous article). What do numbers MEAN? These "flash" estimates of SINGLE DAY sales, or single week sales, or "online sales" mean NOTHING. It is a LIE to report them as if they have any meaning. Sure, 'online sales' mean something as far as chaning buing habits, but they mean NOTHING as far as total sales. The ONLY numbers than mean ANYTHING are sales numbres for the WHOLE MONTHS OF NOVENMBER AND DECEMBER, where you don't have to worry "much) about factors making more specialized numbers MEANINGLESS (on total sales). Doubt me? Never do that.


What was the sales increase for teh month of December? 30%? 20$%? 10%? 1%? Don't be silly,. Every single one of those numbreers is off by at least a multipe of 10--10% being off by a multiple of 100. Yep. The TOTAL retail sales increase for December was ..1%. That is ONE TENTH OF ONE PERCENT. In other words, sales were FLAT in December. Say what? What happened? The medai--especailly the financial media--LIE. That is what happened. It is not just that they left the WRONG impression about the final number. They MISREPRESENTED the significance of the numbers that they presented to give ou the idea that sales were EXPLODING.


Liars one and all, unless you take the "charitable" view that they are really this STUPID (including the financial "reporters"). I vote for BOTH. They are LIARS, and they really are that STUPID. It is just a question of which quality is dominant in any particular misrepresentation.