Can
Truth Prevail?
By Paul
Craig Roberts
March
02, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "According to official US economic data, the
US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has expanded for
22 quarters, raising real GDP 12.1% above its
high prior to the 2008-09 economic contraction.
Yet, US manufacturing output and US industrial
production have not recovered to their
pre-contraction high.
So what
is driving the real GDP growth? In my opinion,
the rise in real GDP is an illusion produced by
the under-measurement of inflation.
As I
have reported on many occasions, John Williams
of shadowstats.com has concluded that changes in
the way that the government approaches the
measurement of inflation has, in effect, defined
inflation away.
Formerly, if a price of an item in an inflation
measure rose, the inflation rate would rise by
the price times the weight of the item in the
index. Today, if a price of an item in an
inflation measure rises, that item is removed
from the index, and a lower cost item
substituted in its place.
A
second way that government has contrived in
order to under measure inflation is to declare
price rises “quality improvements” and not count
the higher price as inflation.
Using
these methods, an 8% rate of inflation can, for
example, be reduced to a 2% inflation rate.
The low
inflation rate is what produces the appearance
of real GDP growth. As GDP is measured in
prevailing prices, in order to know whether the
GDP number is the result of an increase in the
output of goods and services or merely the
result of higher prices or inflation, the
nominal GDP figure is deflated by the inflation
measure.
For
example, if nominal GDP rises 5% this year over
last year, and the inflation rate is measured at
2%, real GDP has grown by 3%. However, if the 2%
inflation rate is the contrived result described
above, and inflation is really 5% or 8%, GDP
growth was zero or declined by 3%.
The
main reason that the government revamped its
measurement of inflation is to save money by
denying Social Security recipients
cost-of-living-adjustments. During the many
years that retirees have had no interest income
on their retirement savings due to the Federal
Reserve’s low interest rate policy in support of
the balance sheets of the “banks too big to
fail,” retirees have also been denied
cost-of-living adjustments to their Social
Security pensions.
In his
latest report John Williams states:
“Decades of massaged reporting methodologies
have distanced headline economic activity from
common experience and underlying reality. When I
started the Shadow Government Statistics
newsletter in 2004, it reflected my formal
experiences of assessing the quality and nature
of headline economic reporting since the early
1980s, and of a broad recognition that Main
Street U.S.A. had a good sense of underlying
economic reality.
“By
2004, underlying economic reality clearly was
not reflected in the headline numbers issued by
most statistical agencies of the federal
government. Headline business conditions broadly
were overstated, while inflation was
understated. A heavily-positive public response
accompanied the ShadowStats.com introduction,
broadly confirming that common experience was
not reflected meaningfully in the government’s
headline data. Reporting quality and related
circumstances have deteriorated since.”
To
speak frankly, the picture of the economy that
is presented to the public is a virtual reality
contrived to take the place of the real reality.
The economic recovery, the low inflation and
unemployment rates are no more real than Saddam
Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s
use of chemical weapons, Iranian nukes, and
Russian invasion of Ukraine. As in the movie,
the Matrix in which Americans live is the
product of government’s ability to control the
explanations.
As John
Williams says, the government’s “GDP reporting
is not close to being credible.” The Federal
Reserve’s Industrial Production Index represents
61% of GDP and remains below its peak prior to
the 2008-09 economic contraction. Yet the
government says real GDP is 12.1% higher.
Try
finding any discussion of this inconsistency in
the financial media.
There
have always been biases in the media, but the
21st century has seen the rise of fake news in
order to advance agendas. For example, the
neoconservative agenda of overthrowing seven
countries in the Middle East in five years was
served by the fake news about Saddam Hussein,
Gadaffi, Assad, and Iran. The military/security
complex’s agenda of a New Cold War was served by
the fake news of Russian invasion and threat to
Europe. President Trump’s intention of restoring
normal relations with Russia was defeated by
fake news of Russian interference in the
presidential election and Trump’s alleged
connections to Russian intelligence.
Practically the entire US population belived the
obvious, transparent lies about Iraq, Libya,
Syria, and Iran and perhaps most still do.
Various polls show that a majority of Americans
believe the obvious lies about the Russians, and
many Amerians want Trump impeached for his
non-existent “Russian connections.”
The
print and TV media and much of the Internet
media create the virtual reality that supports
the agendas of the ruling elites, depriving the
people of comprehension of factual reality.
Websites, such as this one, which endeavor to
provide truthful explanations, are dismissed as
Russian dupes/agents, conspiracy theorists,
kooks, and so forth.
Democracy cannot function when lies crowd out
truth in the service of hidden agendas. Neither
can life on earth. As terrible as the two 20th
century World Wars were in the expenditure of
life and destruction of cities, the weapons were
puny compared to the thermo-nuclear weapons of
today.
According to reports, just one Russian Satan II
nuclear missile has sufficient destructive force
to obliterate France or the state of Texas.
|
Break
Free From The Matrix
|
Russia,
surrounded by 28 hostile NATO countries egged on
by insane neoconservatives and crazed US
generals, relies on nuclear weapons to protect
its homeland. In recent years, various Russian
officials have said that Russia will never again
fight a war on its own territory. This should
tell us something, but it hasn’t.
If you
have a brain, ask yourself what this
orchestrated conflict with Russia is about.
Putin has said that he wants no conflict, that
Russia threatens no one. But the Western
presstitutes declare that Russia is a threat,
and the generals who Trump has appointed to the
highest positions in his new government say that
“Russia is the principal threat to the US.” If
you believe Putin, you are a Russian dupe or
even a traitor. If you believe the New York
Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, you
have signed up for Armageddon.
People
without valid information cannot make valid
decisions. No where in the West other than my
website and a few others is there any valid
information.
My
readership with all the reposts and foreign
translations is very large compared to, for
example, the Washington Post or New York Times,
but it is small compared to the totality of the
Western media, all of which repeat the same
lies. If my readers were organized, and believed
Margaret Mead, they would suffice, but they are
not organized. They are scattered all over the
world.
The
neoconservatives are organized. The
military/security complex also is organized, and
so are the bankers, Wall Street, and global
corporations. For the military/security complex,
the world is something to put at risk for their
enormous “security” budget. For the bankers,
Wall Street, and global corporations, the world
is there to be plundered. The plunder has been
exposed over and over. See for example, John
Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, but
the plunder continues via world organizations
such as the IMF and World Bank, allegedly
goody-goody Western institutions to “help the
needy countries.”
Seldom
in history have the people had a voice. Those
who try to give people a voice are portrayed
negatively by the ruling elites. Thomas Paine’s
Common Sense is the founding document of the
American Revolution. His book, Rights of Man,
sold 500,000 copies, making it the best-selling
book of the 18th century. In Britain his reward
was to be charged with sedition by the
government and declared an outlaw. In the US,
Federalist newspapers in Boston portrayed him as
a drunkard and infidel. There is no monument to
him in Washington, D.C. As Lewis Lapham has
written, “Paine’s plain and forthright speaking
is out of tune with our own contemporary
political discourse, which for the most part is
the gift for saying nothing.” Or for flumuxing
you with false news.
The
voice here at this website, my voice, provides
perspectives that permit escape from the Matrix,
but it depends on your support.
As March is upon us, so is my quarterly request
for your support.
So far, we have both kept our word. You have
supported the site, and I have continued to ruin
my reputation in Washington by writing
explanations that are unpopular in the ruling
circles.
I am
prepared to fight for our lives, but I cannot do
it without you.
Dr.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary
of the Treasury for Economic Policy and
associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He
was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard
News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had
many university appointments. His internet
columns have attracted a worldwide following.
Roberts' latest books are
The
Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic
Dissolution of the West,
How
America Was Lost,
and
The
Neoconservative Threat to World Order.
