New Unemployment Claims, Government Lies and Media Lies

Read the previous article posted on this blog. For that matter, read the previus 52 articles (not quite every week for the past year, but almost, and this has been happening for mroe than a single year). The government, and the media (sllavishly reporting the LIE, and adding to it), CONSISTENTY "report" 3,000 FEWER new unemplylment claims tgab tge REVISED number reported the next week. Then they comapre the UNREVISED number reported in the current week with the REVISED number for the previus week. This means that the number of new unemplyment lcaims, AND the CMOMPARISON with the prefvious week, almost ALWAYS loks 3,00 "better" than it actually is. No, not every single week, but the consistency has been amazing. All you have to do is go back over this blog's articles to see just how consistent this has been.


"But, Skip, the government has no choice but to report the number they have.". Ah, this is the Big Lie: ; the idea that this number is EVER merely "counting", and reporting some kind of COUNT. Taht is simply a LIE. The weekly number is ALWAYS "ADJU:STED", by as much as 100,000 (or more) off of the "actual count"). Yet, this "seasonal adjustment" is MORE SUBJECTIVE, and LESS CERTAIN, than the CONSISTENT 3,000 ERROR in the initial number reported each Thursday. Why not simply ADJUST the number reported each Thursday to match what you KNOW will be the most likely "revision" the next week, and "revise" off of this mMORE CORRECT number?


aThis is the numb of it. The government people, AND the media peopple, LIKE the constant 3,0000 ERROR in favor of "better" "news". Come at it from the other direction. What if there were a CONSISTENT 3,000 OVERESTIMATE in the number of new jobless claims reported each Thursday, and in the COMPARISON with the previous week, makng the numbers look CONSISTENTLY 3,000 WORSE than they "really (remember the even larger "seasonal adjustment") are? Would this be acceptable to the "powers that be"? Surely, you can't be THAT naive!!!!!!!!!!!!


No, in some sense these consistent weekly LIES are DELIBERATE. Now, this is not a truely substantial lie. The REVISIONS in the MONTHLY employment numbers are so large, and so obviusly manipulated, as to make those numbers lamost USELESS> This consistent 3,000 LIE is merely a major annoyance. This is exaclty wh7y, I believe, no "adjustment' is made. They think they can "get away" with this consistent "bias' toward the weeky number looking better than it is. The headlines are almost ALWAYS better than they should be, even apart from the Big Lie that we are dealing with exact nubmers. But 3,000 is hardly a LARGE number, in percentage terms, and it is hard to say that such a consistent "error" really affects much. Again, however, thik of whether even this SMALL :bias" would be accepted if it were THE OTHER WAY. I am confident it would not.


That really tells you all you need to know abut why the "adjustment' I suggest will not be made. Does the government, or the media, want to "adjust" for this CONSISTENT 3,000 error in FAVOR of thier bias (so long as Obama is President), and face the "danger" that the weekly jobless claim report will look WORSE than it "realy" is? I don't thinik so. Note that you can still do the REVISION, if you make the ADJUSTMENT I suggest. You will just be revising off of a more CORRECT (history shows) number. But the idea here is to make the HEADLINES look as good as possible, and the present, consistent ERROR accomplishes that.