BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com
Ever wanted to go backwards in time and embellish your record at any level of life?
Well, the Obama Administration is about to do the same thing with their economic record so go ahead, do it. No one will mind or even know the difference, right?
Here’s just one sample of what they are proposing to do: ‘Based on preliminary estimates for 2007, this change will boost the level of GDP by about 2 percent, or about $300 billion, with about two-thirds coming from private fixed investment and the remainder primarily coming from government consumption expenditures.’
Yep, you read it right. The Obama Administration is going to go backwards in time and add 2% of GDP growth based on just one change that will come out of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) in July of this year.
A better summary can be found in a blog posting in Forbes magazine by Laura Hoffmans, ‘Faster GDP, Different Rules’. At least it seems to read more like modern-day English instead of trying to translate the Chaucerian English of the BEA.
On a very cursory first reading, at the end of each section we noticed the following pattern for each change: ‘This will add 1% to GDP for 2007’. ‘This will add 2% to GDP for 2007’ and so on.
Well, 2007 was the last decent year of economic growth before the kitchen sink was thrown out of the economy in 2008/2009 and has seemingly yet to fully recover yet, especially in terms of employment growth. But if we add a couple of GDP growth points to 2007, what do you think this will mean for subsequent years?
Of course! ALL of the dismal GDP ‘growth’ (sic) over the past 4 years will be revised upwards, ladies and gentlemen!
This is a little like the ‘grade inflation’ of the 1990’s at American universities. Everyone seems to be ‘above average’ nowadays as Garrison Keillor likes to say about Lake Wobegone due to the revaluation upwards of a ‘gentleman’s C’ to a more respectable B.
But the question then becomes: ‘When do we stop comparing apples to apples but instead to kumquats?’
Here’s the official stated GDP growth rates of the past 4 years: -0.4%; -3.5%; +3.0%; +1.7%
Here’s what we predict the ‘new’ revised figures will be when they come out in July: +1.0%, -0.5%; +6%, +4%
We haven’t had the Second Greatest Economic Retrenchment in the last 90 years, ladies and gentlemen! We just didn’t adequately and appropriately ‘account’ for it all correctly!
Maybe we will be off by a smidgen or two in our retroactive ‘projections’. However, since the Obama Administration appears to be sanguine about doing so with their economic record, we have decided to ‘retroactively project’ our high school athletic achievements thusly: ‘I was actually a 6’6″ point forward on the basketball team who averaged 25 ppg; 13 rebounds and 6 assists. Oh, yeah, and we won the state basketball championship, almost forgot to add that. I threw for 10,861 yards during my high school football career, in only 2 years as a starter, that is, and accounted for 56 touchdowns through the air and 25 on the run. We won the state championship as well in football too. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
I lettered in baseball, (which I hated); track, golf and lacrosse which even though it didn’t come to the South until about 1990, I decided to add because the BEA said I could.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot to add that one of our most prominent guards, a Double Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Plasma Physics now at a big college in Texas, pancaked a world record 197 opposing lineman and linebackers our senior year on his way to winning the Heisman Trophy and Outland Trophy for best lineman…ever…at any level of football. (he asked me to say that)’
So go ahead, Rewrite your own history. You’ll feel much better when you do,
The Obama Administration will, we guarantee you that much. Wait til Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow and that guy Ed whatever his name is now on Current or Al-Jazeera or whatever it is called gets ahold of this new BEA report in July!
They’ll be singing ‘Happy Days Have Been Here Again! (since President Obama got elected in 2008!)’ like it is an Italian opera.
Wait and see.
Editor’s Note: Frank Hill is the Director of the Institute for the Public Trust in Charlotte, NC. He is former chief of staff to Congressman Alex McMillan of NC and also served on the staffs of former U.S. Senator Elizabeth Dole and the House Budget Committee.