{"id":78453,"date":"2023-05-13T01:15:21","date_gmt":"2023-05-13T08:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lenpenzo.com\/blog\/?p=78453"},"modified":"2023-05-16T23:01:17","modified_gmt":"2023-05-17T06:01:17","slug":"black-coffee-13-may-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lenpenzo.com\/blog\/id78453-black-coffee-13-may-2023.html","title":{"rendered":"Black Coffee: Figures Lie and Liars Figure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"It’s time to sit back, relax and enjoy a little joe …<\/em><\/p>\n

Welcome to another rousing edition of Black Coffee, your off-beat weekly round-up of what’s been going on in the world of money and personal finance.<\/p>\n

I hope everybody had an enjoyable week. Without further ado, let’s get right to this week’s commentary …<\/p>\n

It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

– Upton Sinclair<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is interesting. But what they hide is vital.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

– Aaron Levenstein<\/strong><\/p>\n

Credits and Debits<\/strong><\/p>\n

Debit:<\/strong><\/span> Did you see this? Most people are at least somewhat aware that the government has been fudging its inflation data since 1981. However there’s a much smaller group who also understands that the bureaucrats have been fudging employment figures since the late 1990s, after the addition of some statistical hocus-pocus<\/a> known as “the birth-death model.” Sadly, this model takes statistics beyond the misleading phase and into the realm of, shall we say, “intentional dishonesty.”<\/p>\n

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Debit:<\/strong><\/span> Frankly, the statistical sleight-of-hand has become hard to ignore this year. But while the press has been mindlessly parroting government claims that new job creation has been off the charts for the last 12 months, they completely ignore the fact that the birth-death model has added 1.84 million jobs since last March, or a whopping 43% of all payrolls added during this period. This means that almost half of all “job gains” in the past year are based on nothing<\/a> more than bureaucrat estimates inserted into an excel spreadsheet – not<\/strong><\/em> actual data.<\/p>\n

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Credit:<\/strong><\/span> But wait \u2026 it gets better. As precious metals analyst Craig Hemke points out, April “also marked the 13th consecutive month<\/strong><\/em> that the (labor) report somehow managed to ‘beat expectations.’ This is unprecedented and, along with the consistent downside revisions that follow, should make it obvious to everyone that the government employees at the BLS are actively gaming the report<\/a> for political purposes.” Curiously, despite a supposedly-booming economy with more and more people finding jobs every month, the growth in withheld taxes has been in a steady decline<\/strong><\/em> since the beginning of 2022. It’s all so odd.<\/p>\n

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(h\/t @NeelyTamminga)<\/p><\/div>\n

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Debit:<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 Then again, anybody who tries to compare the current banking crisis to the number of banks that went down in the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008 should be horrified. After all, the failures already amount to hundreds of billions more than what was seen during the GFC. The trouble is, since then, the Fed has increased its balance sheet from $900 billion to more than $9 trillion, while the National Debt<\/a> has quadrupled from $8 trillion to almost $32 trillion.<\/p>\n

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(h\/t: mediacloud.theweek.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

Debit:<\/strong><\/span> The truth is, the Fed lost control of the debt-based monetary system in 2008. In essence, that’s when the USS America hit the iceberg. Since then, the hole in the hull hasn’t been fixed<\/a>; the Fed has simply papered it over with a gargantuan amount of debt. As for the entrenched inflation, that’s the monetary system’s stern rising into the air before it takes its final plunge to Davey Jones’ Locker. Don’t think the Fed isn’t aware of this, which begs the question: What else<\/strong><\/em> does the Fed know that they aren’t admitting? I think I’ve got the answer. But we should probably ask this guy. You know … just to be sure:<\/p>\n