Kevin Phillips on the Economic Numbers Racket

Update II: Americans are doing considerably worse than the usual economic measures let on.

Update: Debt Rattle, Fire and Iceland; Central Banks Signal Deepening Concern at Outlook as G-7 Meets

via MAL Contends

In the Harper's May issue (not available online yet), Kevin Phillips has a vital piece discussing why the American economy is in worse shape than is acknowledged by bipartisan elites who have been participating not in some "grand conspiracy, just accumulating opportunisms."

Phillips cites John Williams, a California-based economic analyst and statistician, who dubs this predilection over the last several decades to paint an overly-rosy picture of the economy and Americans' financial health: "Pollyanna Creep."

Myself, I call it, lying.

Although Phillips does not write it, like in most dysfunctions of government, the Bush administration is the worst.

Americans know perfectly well that American elites have functioned as a collective Squealer—the character who is a pig in George Orwell's Animal Farm, who contra reality on the farm incessantly squeals how well everyone is doing and how blessed is the state of Animal Farm in all respects.

One does not need to be a reader of CounterPunch, or for that matter a reader of John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich, to know that this taboo analysis is instructive to American families and impolitic towards the squealers.

Writes Phillips:

We might ponder as well who profits from a low-growth U.S. economy hidden under statistical camouflage. Might it be Washington politicos and affluent elites, anxious to mislead voters, coddle the financial markets, and tamp down expensive cost-of-living increases for wages and pensions?

I think we indeed might ponder these points and consider them in the next election, and especially the white working class demographic which seems to focus on gays and their own god deemed vengeful and unloving towards other tribes, especially around election time.
Concludes Phillips:

The U.S. dollar, off more than 40 percent against the euro since 2002, could slip down an even rockier slope. ... The credit markets are fearful, and the financial markets are nervous. If gloom continues, our humbugged nation may truly regret losing sight of history, risk, and common sense.

Unless we enforce a reversal of the major economic and political trends in our society, no manner of preventing gays from marrying or asking for god's wrath is going to help our fellow citizens in this grand American experiment.