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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LTK007 who wrote (67307)	9/7/1999 12:44:00 AM
From: Les H	Respond to of 132070

I don't know how meaningful their statistics are. The Europeans have far more holiday and vacation time than the Americans. Also, with far more job mobility here, people with fewer years at the same company accrue less vacation time. With the holiday time-shares as government entitlement programs over there, it's no wonder that they take off. Seven weeks a year is pretty common there. After taking off August, people still have three weeks left which is as much or more than most Americans have for the entire year.

To: LTK007 who wrote (67307)	9/7/1999 6:24:00 PM
From: Freedom Fighter	Respond to of 132070

Max, Here's my take on government stats. >>I see what Bill F means about "well baked" numbers that get spun just right.<< I think all investors should ask themselves a few simple questions before they make investment decisions based on government statistics. 1. Is is possible to accurately measure key economic statistics whose definitions are widely disputed among the full range of economists? 2. If you could properly define economic growth, productivity, inflation, assets, money supply etc... could any "bureaucratic government entity" collect the data in high enough quantity and quality to be useful, considering all the illegal activity, black markets, and enormous complexity of the task? 3. Should any investor trust the information that comes from an institution whose highest representatives are repeatedly caught in shady deals, lies, theft, sexual misconduct, payoffs, and other acts of low integrity. 4. If the highest representatives of that institution use lies, deceit, spin, false promises, ill gotten contributions, etc... on a regular basis to get elected, why should we expect anything different when it comes to the statistics and spins they present to us that will contribute to their "re-elections". 5. If some of the least controversial items are clearly spun to make things look better than the reality (ex. the federal debt and current deficit), do we really have to ask any of these questions at all? To be clear, I'm not trashing the many hard working government employees that are out there. But trusting politicians to provide useful investment and economic data is sort of silly in my view. What's the saying, "I rather be approximately right than precisely wrong." Wayne