Is govt manipulating economic stats to make sure we never officially enter a recession this year?

Question

I know what the so called definition of recession is, but its clear there are a lot of things on the downturn economically in the USA..and of course we are not in a recession officially. It may very well be that when they tell us we are in a recession it will be more than a recession and maybe a mild depression.

Answer 1

The powers can only spin this so much, soon reality will take over, but unfortunately for many, when it does, it will be too late for too many.

Answer 2

Every administration manipulates the data and reports as rosy a picture as possible. The W. Bush administration has been especially bad, but not unusual.

People who say the government can't manipulate the data are naive. Most economic data is aggregated and collected by the government and most businesses and analysts assume the data is accurate. Most of the time it is, but critics often point out flaws in methodology that make the data less reliable. Flaws in methodology can be exploited by the government.

In general, the government tries not to fudge the data, but more the predictions and forecasts based on that data. They can make a rosy forecast, because they know the rosy forecast will have an immediate impact and they won't get caught until the data slowly trickles in. By the time their forecast can be evaluated, they've had time to make a raft of excuses.

The Bush administration has unfortunately demonstrated they are willing to manipulate data and influence otherwise more non-partisan, objective parts of the government to spin the data in their favor.

Answer 3

If you call deliberately adjusting economic policy so that we don't enter a recession then yes, but that would be a stupid self serving way to put it.

What is more important? The economy or having the economy actually get worse so getting the coveted bad news to use as an issue can occur?

It is actually the democrats and their press lap dog operatives which are hammering on the public perception which they know could lead to depressed economic realities and so benefit them politically which is the self serving manipulation.

Democrats actually want the economy to be bad, just as they hopped for bad news in our war efforts, for their own political aspirations. How sick is that?

Answer 4

BINGO!  

Answer 5

It would be impossible for these statistics to be manipulated simply because the raw data used to produce them is available in the public arena.  

The fact of the matter is that people believed we are in a recession because the news media decided that saying this would give them better ratings.

This is the same reason the news media spent years claiming we were losing in Iraq.