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To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (132045)	9/28/2001 3:26:29 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 164684

SB, don't know nothin' 'bout cooked books, but productivity numbers, to some degree, seem to be demand driven and transient. It works both ways. As demand for goods (particularly tech goods) has dropped, workers end up sitting around playing solitaire and minesweeper until employers realize they don't need so many people. Goods produced per hour worked drops. Lower productivity. OTOH, if things are really hopping, hiring can't keep up with labor requirements (especially with 4% unemployment) so workers are pushed to keep up. Higher productivity. Isn't that a more likely explanation for the unusually high productivity numbers during the boom than AG cooking the books? Of course, I don't know exactly how they calculate productivity numbers. If I'm wrong, I'm sure GST will help me out. ;-) Bob PS: Re your copying my joke about the $10 trillion <g>, I couldn't resist the jab at cb's overall nonsense. However, though he/she probably doesn't have a clue why, cb's not entirely wrong about unrealized losses (and, importantly, gains too) not being entirely "real". Since that $10 trillion, or whatever the market cap "loss" has been, never really existed to begin with, its evaporation has the exact same relevance. Not that it is irrelevant - there is a psychological impact with economic implications, but those gains that are now gone could never have been realized by more than a relative few people on the margin. That's the fallacy of taking marginal prices and deriving an implied valuation for an entire company or the market. The $10 trillion was a fantasy and now it's gone. I woke up and Jennifer Anniston wasn't there any more. AG must have kidnapped her. ;-)