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

To: Mike M2 who wrote (59066)	5/11/1999 3:44:00 PM
From: Freedom Fighter	Respond to of 132070

Mike, The problem I have with all these government stats is that wages, income, and profits are distorted by the stock option compensation issue. Andrew Smithers did a report on it recently and demonstrated that it has now reached very significant levels. I agree with him based on my own observations of the companies I have looked at. I should point out that none of this is relevant to my own investing. I look at the individual companies. But I think a lot of journalists, economists, and investors are off track by a wide margin about what's going on in the economy. Wages are rising somewhat faster and are a bit higher than people think, and earnings and margins are a lot lower. They are just not being measured properly. That's why I'm wondering about the productivity measurements and the inflation measurements too. I don't know how they come up with them. There was an article in the WSJ today saying that the current inflation measurement is not consistent with the past. That suggests that even if the current productivity number is correct and the old one was wrong, it's not as good as it looks relative to the past. Either way, theoretically it should show up in wages eventually whether accountants, investors, and the government want to measure it properly or not. Wayne