Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Waking up to economic reality

John Rubino has posted an insightful new article called, "America, Ex-Distortion", to the DollarCollapse website.

In a nutshell, this piece describes how America is slowly waking up to economic reality, as mainstream observers start to uncover the truth of how government statistics distort the true picture of the nation's economic health.

To illustrate this point, Rubino highlights a recent article adressing this topic by Kevin Phillips in Harper's Magazine. Here's an excerpt from Kevin Phillips' article.

"...since the 1960s, Washington has been forced to gull its citizens and creditors by debasing official statistics: the vital instruments with which the vigor and muscle of the American economy are measured.

The effect, over the past twenty-five years, has been to create a false sense of economic achievement and rectitude, allowing us to maintain artificially low interest rates, massive government borrowing, and a dangerous reliance on mortgage and financial debt even as real economic growth has been slower than claimed."

That's just a piece of Phillips' opening. If you'd like to see the whole passage, and a brief look at how inflation, economic growth, national debt, and unemployment numbers would look if properly reported, see Rubino's article.

And if you'd like to hear more about John Williams' work at Shadow Government Statistics (cited as a main source for Phillips' article), you can check out his very recent interview with the Financial Sense Newshour.

Thanks to Bear Mountain Bull for his earlier post on both of these points.