BLS Verilerle Oynuyor!

Carpe Diem, Michigan Üniversitesi'nden Prof. Mark J. Perry'nin ekonomi blogu. Bu blogdan geçenlerde Mankiw'in blogunda yayınlanan bir yazı sayesinde haberim oldu. O zamandan beri izliyorum. Güzel yazılar çıkıyor, size de tavsiye ederim. Neyse, bu blogda dün çıkan bir yazıda ABD ekonomisinin neden resesyona doğru gitmediğine dair altı neden denildikten sonra çeşitli eyaletlerdeki işsizlik oranlarının düşüklüğünden bahsediliyordu. Fakat benim ilgimi bu yazıdan çok okuyucuların bu yazıya yaptıkları yorumlar çekti. Ben baktığımda dört yorum vardı ve bunlar şöyleydi:

4 Comments:

At 12:45 PM, Anonymous said...

Ooops....did you forget California?

At 1:46 PM, Anonymous said...

Mr. Carpe Diem, you continue to smoke some SERIOUS crack. Keep relying on those government-generated jobs numbers! How about this: why don't you show us the % of birth/death jobs created as a percentage of total jobs created over the last twelve months? Or maybe you could explain to us how the actual unemployment rate calcultion methodology has changed since 1990? Seriously, you are embarassing yourself.

At 6:35 AM, juandos said...

Forget California?!?! Isn't California TAXING itself out of the employment business or hadn't you noticed?

anon @ 1:46 p.m. whines: "Keep relying on those government-generated jobs numbers! How about this: why don't you show us the % of birth/death jobs created as a percentage of total jobs created over the last twelve months?"...

Why don't you? If YOU have more credible numbers (not Krugman numbers) than what the BLS has, roll them out!

Speaking of someone who should be embarassed about what he/she posts, have you no idea what your comment reads like?

Just curious, are you a Marxist?

At 10:54 AM, Anonymous said...

Marxist? Hardly.

Listen, I apologize for being so caustic in my post above. That was wrong. That is not an efficient, effecitve, or polite way to communicate. So let me start over.

I believe the numbers out of Washington are totally politicized. TOTALLY. And they have been for years. If you take the time to go to John Williams' website and read it for yourself, you'll learn some interesting things. John's been tracking the changes in calculation methodologies for nearly thirty years, and he knows all the games being played. And it's not like the gov't is hiding the changes! The changes are all in the footnotes.

http://www.shadowstats.com/cgi-bin/sgs/article/id=341

The link above explains how the jobs numbers are calculated and how that process has changed over the years to radically understate the jobless rate here in the USA.

http://www.shadowstats.com/cgi-bin/sgs/article/id=343

The link above explains how the CPI numbers are calculated and how that process has changed over the years to radically understate reported inflation.

http://www.shadowstats.com/pdf/779-626538446.pdf

The link above is an interview with John Williams by Kathryn Welling from Weeden. This is a great primer.

Beyond that, the most important thing is not necessarily to care what the real numbers are, IMO. The most important thing is to trade the tape. That's it. To rail against the numbers is fun, but it's really pointless if you want to make money.

And by the way, I do like Kudlow at market bottoms. It's when we are making a top that he's insufferable. He's blind to the biases of the data, blind to the implications of a market overshooting its rational endgame, willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of his own philosophy of America and the Republican party. Not that there's anything wrong with that! But there is (kinda) if you do want to paint an accurate picture of what is going on. And I'm a Libertarian.

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Vay anasını!!! Bu tartışma size de fazlasıyla tanıdık gelmedi mi? Ben böyle şeyler sadece Türkiye'de olur sanıyordum. Meğer BLS de verilerle oynuyormuş! Sadece BLS de değil, ABD'nin bütün istatistik kurumları. İyi de birader o zaman biz bu iktisatçılık (iktisat nedir) işini bırakalım. Eğer herkes verilerle oynuyorsa biz neye bakıp değerlendirme yapacağız? Bu işe devam edeceksek de galiba en iyisi bazı iktisatçıların yaptığı gibi kendi verimizi kendimiz üretmek olacak!!

Bu arada ABD'de verilerle oynandığını iddia eden okuyucunun verdiği linklere gidip baktım. Gerçekten ilginç şeyler var. John Williams (adını ilk kez duyuyorum) ABD'nin Mustafa Sönmez'i (verilerle oynadığı gerekçesiyle TÜİK'i mahkemeye vermeye kalkmıştı, sonra ne oldu bilmiyorum) falan galiba. John Williams'ın internet sitesi şurada. Bu sitede şu sayfada çok ilginç istatistikler var. Millet ABD resesyona mı gidiyor diye tartışıyor ama meğerse bu ülke 1990'ların başından beri resesyondaymış, kimsenin haberi yok!!!