The Economy – Part I -“Cookin’ the Books!” and “Hunky Dory”

The Economy – Part I -“Cookin’ the Books!” and  “Hunky Dory”

“Cookin’ the Books”: “Culinary Accounting; Cookin’ the Books!” is the title of Mike Folkerth’s post  yesterday over at mikefolkerth.com (Mike Folkerth – King of Simple). This post, from a guy with snow shovel’s worth of common sense, just adds to PrudentHome’s view that a great deal of the economic (and other) information coming from the MSM and the ’Fed Gov’ is skewed, spun and on occasion, downright false.  Here are highlights from Mr. Folkerth’s piece, see what you think:

• “Greg Easterbrook said,’Torture numbers and they will confess to anything.’”
• “… unemployment numbers … real unemployment numbers. The announcement that the unemployment rate declined slightly to 9.4 percent in July while only 247,000 additional jobs were lost has been greeted as good news. Really?
• “How is it possible for the unemployment rate to essentially remain unchanged when 247,000 jobs have been lost? The reason is simple — the number of people who stopped looking for work rose dramatically. Six hundred thirty-seven thousand additional people no longer consider themselves looking for work.”
• “If we include the normally counted number of unemployed as well as those who have recently given up looking for work and those who have taken a part-time low paying job because they can’t find full-time work, the implication is that the unemployment rate for July would be at 16.3 percent!”

“Hunky Dory”: From The Daily Reckoning (dailyreckoning.com) on 8/9/09 we get this James Howard Kunstler post entitled “Hunky Dory”. It’s a commentary on the “green shoots”, “we’re bottoming out”, and general Pollyanna  view on the economy given almost daily by the ‘Fed Gov’ and the MSM. Mr. Kunstler’s view on events and conditions speak to a  different and perhaps more realistic perspective. Here are some of his views:

• “A broad consensus has formed in the news media and among government mouthpieces and even some ‘bearish” investors on the street that “the worst is behind us” in this tortured economy. This view is completely crazy.”
• “Too many disastrous things are lined up in the months ahead to insure that we’re entering a new phase of history: The Long Emergency (also the title of  Mr. Kunstler’s excellent non-fiction book/PH).
• Government at every level is worse than broke.
• Our currency, the US dollar, is hemorrhaging legitimacy.
• Inability to service old debt at all levels or incur new debt.
• Bad (toxic) debt lurking off balance sheets everywhere.
• The housing bubble fiasco is far from over.
• Commercial real estate fiasco just getting started.
• Unemployment rising implacably.
• So-called “consumers” unable to consume consumables.
• Crucial energy import supply lines fragile.
• Food supply subject to energy problems and climate abnormalities.
• A world full of societies who would enjoy watching us fail and suffer.
• “When ‘The Long Emergency’ was published in 2005, I said then that the greatest danger this society faced would be its inclination to gear up a campaign to sustain the unsustainable at all costs — rather than face the need to make new arrangements for daily life. That appears to be exactly what has happened … .”

We plan to finish Part II at the end of this week. There’s a lot more to come.

Until next time: keep your eyes on the horizon as the weather’s changing fast.