JF, Chained dollars that I am talking about is the phony method the US uses to calculate GDP. Though chained dollars are used in all sorts of industries, the most important miscalculation is in computer sales.
Here is how it works: The US counts growth in "computing power" as sales growth, not in dollar sales. Of course, we have been in an era where computing power has grown exponentially while ASPs of the same computers have fallen like a rock.
For example, last year, chained dollar computer sales growth added $158 billion to GDP, more than half of GDP growth. In real dollars, computer sales were up less than $8 billion. This discrepancy of 95% between actual numbers and govt. fantasy numbers is the ONLY component of our outsized GDP growth and productivity growth and low inflation numbers. Without chained dollar sales of computers, both GDP growth and productivity growth look very sickly.
BTW, the US is the only industrial country to run this scam. But, hey, in other countries, the investors can read. <g> |
