Could this be the article you mention??
Thursday, Aug. 8, 2002 9:05 a.m. EDT
Novak: Clinton Cooked Government Books?
Figures on corporate profits were wildly overstated by Clinton administration statisticians during 1999 and 2000, a government report issued last week reveals, begging the question of whether the feds engaged in the kind of bottom-line book-cooking that has recently seen a number of corporate executives being led away in handcuffs.
"The Commerce Department's painful report last week that the national economy is worse than anticipated obscured the document's startling revelation. Hidden in the morass of statistics, there is proof that the Clinton administration grossly overestimated the strength of the economy leading up to the 2000 election," reports nationally syndicated columnist Robert Novak.
Starting in 1999, as the report by Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis makes clear, before-tax business profits were overstated by a factor of 10 percent. As the presidential election drew closer, that discrepancy skyrocketed to nearly 30 percent.
The bogus figures gave the U.S. electorate a false picture of a thriving economy, allowing Clinton's would-be successor, Al Gore, to campaign as the rightful heir to "the longest economic boom in American history" when in fact the economy had been heading into the tank for two years.
Clinton Undersecretary of Commerce Rob Shapiro dismissed the notion that the distorted figures represented any kind of Enrongate-style fraud, insisting to Novak that the agency's Bureau of Economic Analysis is "the most non-political, non-partisan agency in the government."
Still, Novak's report has more than a few in the business community wondering when those who presided over the government's fraudulent bookkeeping will be held to the same level of accountability as executives from WorldCom, Tyco and half a dozen other corporate giants now under investigation. |
