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Skeeter, I didn't see the show butIt must have been Robert Gordon of Northwestern University. I have posted his web url before search Northwestern University. He was interviewed in Business Week this summer. In the September 99 issue of the Richebacher letter they quote an excerpt from Gordon's conclusions " A final conclusion is that every observer of the economy from business Week to Alan Greenspan, has been misled about the economy's performance by focusing on measures of prices, output, and productivity that include computers. The huge exponential growth rates of computer output, and negative growth rates of computer prices, have managed to contaminate the statistics, despite the admirable move of the BEA in 1996 to chain-weighted indexes of prices and output changes. One of the most surprising results in this paper is that the productivity performance of the manufacturing sector of the US economy since 1995 has been abysmal rather than admirable. Not only has productivity growth in non-durable manufacturing decelerated in 1995-9 when compared to 1972-95, but productivity growth stripped of computers has decelerated even more. The BEA and BLS would do a great service to commentators and policy makers if they were to design as soon as possible a set of accounts of output and productivity growth, and of inflation, which refer on a consistent basis to the 98.8% of the economy engaged in activities other than the manufacture of computers." The Richebacher Letter 1217 St Paul St Baltimore, MD 21202 Personally, i think prof. gordon is being too charitable to the BEA and BLS - i feel the changes were an attempt to rationalize the bubble. Mike ho ho ho |
