You successfully added to your cart! You can either continue shopping, or checkout now if you'd like.
Note: If you'd like to continue shopping, you can always access your cart from the icon at the upper-right of every page.
Recall how the government figures for the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) for the third quarter was said to be 3.5% and how this was "proof" that we were coming out of recession? Here's the article:
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2009/pdf/gdp3q09_adv_fax.pdf
In November, they downgraded their estimates to a mere 2.8%, and I wrote in a weblog that "I knew it was too good to be true."
Well, now they have once again downgraded it to a mere 2.2%.
http://scottrhymer.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/thrid-quarter-gdp-downgraded-over-1/
It makes a person wonder when this will end. If the government economists are so incompetent that they can misoverestimate the GDP by 62%, something is drastically wrong with their measuring sticks.
More likely, they are just lying--all for our own good, of course. They know that the stock market is not going to go up or down on the basis of old news. They can lie on the first estimate, causing a rise in the stock market, and then when the lie is exposed, the stock market shrugs its shoulders.
Lying is a big part of the government "stimulus package." I just marvel at that the stock brokers seem to actually believe what the government says.