Government Lying

Graffiti on the entrance of a bank in New York City

This is a two-part report: The first part deals with the incredible amount of lying that has been going on with regard to the nation's unemployment numbers; the second deals with the societal impact that unemployment is having on the country - AND IT DEALS WITH THIS IN A CONCRETE MANNER THAT UTILIZES THE "EYES-ON" OBSERVATIONS OF A COURAGEOUS POLICE SERGEANT IN THE ATLANTA AREA.  What makes this important insofar as Christians are concerned is that the business elites responsible for all the lying that's been occurring have "tricked" American Christians into believing that they are on the side of the "angels" - that is to say, "Christ and the church" - when in fact they have no concern at all for the message of the "Poor Carpenter of Nazareth." This is part and parcel of the "GREAT DECEPTION" of the "end of days" - tricking Christians into taking the side of the devil:

"Let no man DECEIVE you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away [APOSTASY] first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition ..." [Please see our article, "Apostasy: Christianity in the Service of a Religio-Political-Corporate-Terrorist State."

Don't you allow yourself to be DECEIVED IN YOUR EFFORT TO MAINTAIN YOURSELF ECONOMICALLY; some of my closest companions have done so; and if they can "fall away," so can you unless you pay very close attention to what is happening. That's what prophecy is all about - guiding you through the DECEPTION at the "end of the age."  Please also see our articles, "The United States: Replicating the Slave Economy of the Old South and Leaving Average Citizens to Sink into Poverty" and "A Permanent 30% Unemployment Rate."]

NOTE: This report was published in March of 2009 when the unemployment rate was 8.5 percent. At present, the unemployment rate is 9.6 percent. Thus, the so-called U6 Report (or "broad unemployment rate") should read 17.6 percent rather than 15.6 percent, and the REAL unemployment rate suggested by Dr. Weiss should read 22.3 percent rather than 19.8 percent (see graph below).

INTRODUCTION

Many years ago, when Dad and I used to look at official data and analysis, we knew they were flawed. So we developed our own. That's how we figured out that the capital of savings and loans banks [i.e., speaking of the S&L crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s] was grossly overstated and that thousands of S&Ls were headed for a massive bust. [NOTE: 747 S&L banks went bust leading to a $160.1 billion bail out; we URGE you to see our article, "How Washington Is Fooling You."]

Our awareness of the flaws was also a key factor in helping us warn consumers prior to the failures of giant insurance companies during the 1990s. It was critical to helping us warn you of nearly every major financial failure in the debt crisis that began more than two years ago. Plus, it's one of the main reasons I believe the government's efforts to bail out Citigroup, AIG, and other financial institutions are doomed to failure: Their numbers are wrong, their theories are upside down, and they're fighting the wrong war; but we're not the only ones finding fatal flaws in official numbers and conclusions. John Williams of ShadowStats.com has been persistently doing so with the government's official data on inflation and unemployment, among other key measures.

HIS LATEST ESTIMATE OF THE TRUE MARCH UNEMPLOYMENT RATE IN THE UNITED STATES: 19.8 PERCENT! [22.3 PERCENT today - see note above.]

Hard to believe? Then consider the facts:

Fact #1. Fatally Flawed Official Unemployment Number

The U.S. government's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shocked the world Friday with the release of its official, headline unemployment number: A surge from 8.1 percent to 8.5 percent.

But it's really a lot worse. This number (called "U-3″), although invariably cited by the press in the headlines, is the narrowest, most sugarcoated measure of U.S. joblessness:

• It excludes workers seeking full-time jobs, failing to find them, and then accepting part-time work that almost invariably pays far less.

• It excludes discouraged workers who have given up looking for jobs because they can't find any.

• And, as if that wasn't enough to color the truth, the BLS has been consistently and grossly understating the current unemployment numbers, not revising them until months later when fewer people are paying attention.

Williams points out that:

"The pattern of impossible biases being built into the headline monthly payroll employment continued with March 2009 reporting. Instead of the headline jobs loss of 663,000, consistent application of seasonal-adjustment factors would have shown a more-severe monthly jobs loss of about 750,000. This upside reporting bias has been seen in 11 of the last 12 months, with a rolling 12-month total upside headline-number bias of 1,345,000."

The proof: In every single one of its six most recent monthly payroll reports, the BLS has announced massive upward revisions in prior months' job loss numbers — with five of those even exceeding its own guidelines for the acceptable margin of error (plus or minus 5 percent).

Fact #2. Government Admits Some of the Flaws

The government also publishes a broader measure of unemployment ("U-6″), which corrects some — but not all — of the above flaws.

This measure includes many discouraged and part-time workers, as it should. And, lo and behold, those adjustments alone add more than seven full percentage points to the unemployment rate!

Instead of 8.5 percent unemployment, suddenly we see that we have 15.6 percent unemployment , according the government's own admission.

Instead of a recession, suddenly we see that we are already in a depression.

Most importantly, rather than a government that recognizes the fundamental failure of its efforts over the years to pump-prime the economy — with abundant cheap money, huge federal deficits, and financial bailouts — we have a government that continues to pursue this same folly with ever greater zeal.

It's the epitome of self-deception, leading to misguided policy and, ultimately, causing extreme hardships for nearly everyone, including unemployed officials themselves.

Fact #3. Government Still Fails to Admit ALL of the Flaws

Not only has the government excluded discouraged workers from its headline number, manipulating the public's perception ... it also distorts the way it measures discouraged workers. It's a manipulation within a manipulation , which Williams explains as follows:

"During the Clinton Administration, 'discouraged workers' — those who had given up looking for a job because there were no jobs to be had — were redefined so as to be counted only if they had been 'discouraged' for less than a year. This ... defined away the bulk of the discouraged workers."

In other words, if you've been a discouraged worker for less than a year, you are among those counted in the broader 15.6 percent unemployment rate the government revealed on Friday.

But if you've been discouraged for more than a year, suddenly and magically, the government says you're not "discouraged" any more. In BLS newspeak, you're a non-discouraged, non-unemployed non-person. You don't exist. Or maybe you just don't get what the real definition of "is" is.

By Williams' and any reasonable person's definition, though, you're still unemployed. You still need a place to live and food to eat. And for Washington to make reasoned decisions, you still need to be counted.

Result: Even the government's broadest measure of unemployment — now at 15.6 percent — is grossly understated. The real figure, Williams estimates, is 19.8 percent.

DEPRESSION-LEVEL UNEMPLOYMENT!
AND WE'RE STILL FAR FROM THE BOTTOM!

The peak unemployment rate in America's First Great Depression was 25 percent. Trouble is, it's hard to pinpoint how the measurements back then correspond to the various measures today.

My view: Although the tools of official deception may have been less developed, the real unemployment rate in the 1930s was probably higher in those days as well — with many among the unemployed falling through the cracks and simply never counted.

No matter what, the inescapable conclusions for today should be evident:

We are already in a depression. Based on the government's own admission, we have high, double-digit unemployment [based on the U6 Report]. That clinches it.

The economy's decline still has a long way to go. Yes, on the eve of the BLS release last Friday, some people were starting to talk about a "possible bottom" in the economy — "maybe." But that talk ended abruptly as soon as economists took one look at the release and realized the utter speed of the decline. As The New York Times explained on Saturday, "The severity and breadth of the job losses in March — which afflicted nearly every industry outside of health care — prompted economists to conclude that an agonizing plunge in employment prospects was still unfolding."

The Obama stimulus package is too little, too late for the economy. "When drafting plans in January to spend roughly $800 billion to stimulate the deteriorating economy," continues The New York Times, "the Obama administration operated on the assumption that the unemployment rate would reach 8.9 percent by the end of the year — without the extra federal spending. Three months into the year, the unemployment rate has already soared to 8.5 percent, from 7.6 percent, the highest level in more than a quarter-century."

The Obama stimulus package is too much, too soon for the bond market. With the economy weaker than expected, you'd think bond investors, who traditionally see a falling economy as the best antidote to inflation, would rejoice. Instead, they're doing precisely the opposite. They know that the stimulus package is driving the federal deficit to an unheard-of $2 trillion. They know the Fed cannot cut rates below zero. And so they're using every opportunity to sell. Result: Even Friday, when the shocking jobless release hit the newswires, bond investors dumped bonds, driving prices lower and yields higher.

Government bonds are the next big shoe to fall in this giant debt crisis. I don't mean the government will default on its debt. What I'm referring to is the market prices of medium- and long-term government bonds. They're already falling sharply, driving long-term rates higher. As the Treasury rushes to finance its recent bailout frenzy, expect that trend to accelerate ...

Good luck and God bless!

Dr. Martin Weiss

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Dear Antipas:

I enjoyed reading your synopsis of Don Peck's article regarding joblessness and I wanted to expand a little bit on it from my perspective. [Please see Don Peck's article, "How a Jobless Era Is Transforming America."]

I am a patrol sergeant in a large metropolitan Atlanta law enforcement agency. What I see on the street has surprised me a little bit. When the recession started we all braced ourselves for a hugeup-tickin crime, especially property crimes such as burglary, entering auto, shoplifting and other types of theft. We figured people would steal to "make ends meet", doing whatever they had to do to survive. With one exception, though, that didn't really come true. The one area we did see an increase was theft of metal (scrap metal,catalyticconverters, etc) when metal prices shot through the roof. That eventually died down and it turns out it was the same people that were committing these crimes before the recession, they were just doing more of it. The lesson I learned from this was that criminals were still criminals and regular people were still regular people.

One other area that has seen a dramatic increase is prescription drug usage. People are self-medicating like never before. This has spawned a new type of criminal as well...people that are willing to forge prescriptions to get pills. But this is not what has caused me the most concern.

What I have seen first hand has been a lot of suicides. Suicide committed by middle- and upper-class folks who now think they have no future because they lost all their money. I first came to the realization that this was going to be a problem about two years ago. I responded to a vacant piece of property that was going to be a subdivision to find the property owner dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. What surprised me was when I went to speak to his widow and father afterward, I had to be buzzed in through the gate and drive down the circular cobblestone driveway to get to the million dollar home. Now in some parts of the country (like California) a million dollar home is nothing more than a decent 3 bedroom 2 bath house. Not here though. This guy was obviously very well off with a pretty wife and two young children. He was living the dream. That is until his land investments had taken a nose dive and his family was now on the verge of losing everything. He was one of the hardest hit by the recession early on and there are many, many more like him that span the middle- and upper-class spectrum that have either contemplated or followed through with taking their own life.

Like I said this problem spans a pretty broad spectrum of folks who have been hit hard by the recession. But here are the lessons I learned that I wanted to pass along:

Criminals are still criminals, no matter what the economic condition.

Normal people do NOT turn to crime when times get tough. Most of them downsize, buckle down and get as many jobs as they can. A lot of them become like the women showcased in the book, "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich. I say women because of the STAGGERING number of divorces that I see going on over economic problems, but that is a whole 'nother topic!

Poor people remain poor. What I mean by this is that their lot in life has not changed one bit by all this so nothing has really changed with them. No surge in suicides, divorces or theft.

God bless you guys, and thanks for all you do.