First, The White House Re-defined Recession, Then Doctored Job Numbers

Nietzsche: “I’m not upset that you lied to me. I’m upset that from now on, I can’t believe you.”

Do you remember when the White House tried to change the definition of a recession?

Their July blog post claimed that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP doesn’t constitute a recession.

They argued that we need a “holistic look” at the data that primarily include the labor market.

A couple of weeks later, they got the job reports they wanted.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the labor market was super strong, and the US economy added more than a million jobs in the second quarter of this year.

Adding one million new jobs during a crashing economy seemed like magic, but it made perfect sense for The New York Times, which immediately wrote,

“Unexpectedly strong employment growth reported for July also appeared to contradict forecasts that the economy was cooling off.”

In other words, according to the government and media, the recession never started, and even if it did, it was officially over.

Oops, we got it wrong by a million jobs!

But the Philadelphia Fed decided to check the numbers and found out that the US economy didn’t add more than one million jobs in Q2.

The report released last week estimated that from March to June of this year, the U.S. added just 10,500 jobs, which is a glaring difference from the 1,121,500 estimated by the BLS.

So the BLS numbers were lies.

Why did they do it?

There are two main reasons.

The first is to avoid accountability.

Instead of being accountable for the economic devastation caused by draconian lockdowns and unprecedented money printing, they redefined recession and doctored the job numbers.

But the second reason is even more sinister.

Politicians have an insatiable lust for power, and they are capable of doing anything to get reelected.

The White House knows that most voters vote based on the economy. If they admitted that the economy was in recession, the democrats would lose the Senate election.

Since the midterm elections were widely considered as the referendum on Biden, the last thing they wanted was to let the news about the “Biden recession” go out of hand.

So instead, they tweaked the definition of a recession and doctored the job numbers.

Takeaway

The first big takeaway from this story is that we are starting to see a gaslighting pattern.

If governments don’t like specific outcomes, they change definitions to fit their narrative. In other words, they change reality merely by calling it something else.

And the second takeaway is that we cannot trust the US government’s numbers. If you undermine the trust in one government figure, it automatically undermines trust in the entire reporting mechanism.

Or, as Friedrich Nietzsche said, “I’m not upset that you lied to me. I’m upset that from now on, I can’t believe you.”

So what can you do about it?

Start thinking for yourself.

Stop paying too much attention to what the government says like it’s the gospel truth.

And start taking care of your future before it’s too late.

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