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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pcstel who wrote (144318)	7/11/2014 11:18:00 AM
From: RetiredNow	Respond to of 149317

yeah, no kidding. I think many gov't statistics are just noise and BS. To me, the most important thing is to understand how much disposable income after true inflation is available to Americans. That tells us how wealthy Americans are and whether they have the ABILITY to spend and to be taxed. In addition, we need to understand how much is actually siphoned off as taxes. The combination of these things helps us understand the true state of the economy as whole and our gov't fiscal balance. The unemployment rate is problematic for two reasons, because it doesn't account for discouraged or no longer looking workers, even though they are unemployed and not contributing to total disposable and taxable income and curtailing their spending as a result, which means they are a drag on our economy. GDP is problematic in that it is completely manipulated by seasonal adjustments, flat out guess that are adjustment factors, and a deflator for inflation that is basically useless, because inflation is completely manipulated lower for political purposes in this country. So GDP does not measure the true pain Americans are feeling, which Disposable Income would show. Anyway, I could go on, but all the headline metrics are pretty much useless in understanding what is happening to our economy. Hopefully, the Fed is smarter than our news propaganda media, but they haven't shown much intelligence or ability to understand the unintended consequences of their actions. So I don't hold out much hope for a smarter Fed.