Pat Stats

This isn’t the first time we’ll be citing the wisdom of Paul Craig Roberts, the former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, nor will it be the last.

Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued its monthly fudged report. The BLS proudly announced that the number of new non-farm jobs created in July, 163,000, exceeded the monthly population growth of 150,000, and that’s supposed to be a positive indication that our recession concerns are behind us.

Strangely enough, however, their quoted unemployment rate for July (8.3%) was higher than the one they gave us in June (8.2%). The announcement made no sense at all, but that didn’t surprise us. The true unemployment rate is somewhere in the high 20s, and everyone knows it, so last week’s manipulations by the BLS made no sense at all. Read what Professor Roberts says:

“In his report on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest jobs and unemployment report, statistician John Williams writes: ‘The July employment and unemployment numbers published today, August 3rd, were worthless and misleading.’

“I will spare the readers an explanation of Williams’ account of the manipulation that is occurring as it is too arcane for the general reader. Instead, let’s just apply common sense. According to the BLS, there were 163,000 new non-farm payroll jobs created in July. This figure is about 13,000 more jobs than is needed to keep pace with population growth. Therefore, the unemployment rate should have decline fractionally. Instead, the unemployment rate (U3) rose from 8.25 IN June to 8.3% in July.

“In case you missed the point, new jobs, a net figure, rose and so did the unemployment rate! Moreover, the alternative – but much less reported – jobs report from the Household Survey found that the economy lost 195,000 jobs in July.

“The government that lies to you about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, about Iraq’s al Qaeda connections, about the Taliban in Afghanistan, about Osama bin Laden, about Libya and Gadhafi, about Iranian nukes, about Syria, about Pakistan, about Yemen and Somalia, about Bradley Manning, about Julian Assange and Wikileaks, indeed about everything under the sun, also lies to you about jobs, unemployment, economic recovery, GDP growth, 9/11, the ‘terrorist threat’ – everything. Try to find anything that the government has said over the past six presidential terms that is not a lie. Other than some minor insignificant detail, ‘your’ government has been consistently lying to you about everything of importance …

“‘Your’ government lies to you because ‘your’ government has an agenda that it most certainly will not tell you about, because if you knew about it, you would revolt.” –

And we’ve always said, “Building our patented container ships would save us all a lot of grief.”