The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) is scheduled to deliver their calculation for the second quarter (Apr, May, June) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on July 28, this week. The calculation is essentially the total value of all goods and services generated within the U.S. economy, minus the value of exports received.
CTH has predicted the people within the BEA research group [SEE HERE], ie those who make the determinations of GDP, will circle the statistical wagons and generate something akin to a positive 0.5% GDP figure for Q2.
The reason is simple… As with all other highly political institutions in U.S. government, the BEA is driven by political ideology.
With the Biden administration’s Green New Deal energy policy driving the U.S. economy into the ground; and with the BEA statisticians worshipping at the same governmental altar as all other climate change ideologues; they will do everything in their power to defend what the people behind Joe Biden are doing.
[For the greater good and all things that are associated with that line of elitist thinking.]
The BEA data team will first play with the statistics by underestimating the rate of inflation in their value calculations. If that effort doesn’t yield the desired result, the BEA will likely move to avoid calculating import data from the West coast (Port of LA, Port of Long Beach, and/or Port of Oakland) for the month of June. The current labor union and trucker issues within the ports will help create the noise to justify any interim data that is false. [Whoops, we’ll catch it in the updates, etc]
That’s just how this BEA crew rolls. If they can save the planet by fudging the statistics, well, they will have done their part. This approach, the expression of ‘their truth‘, is just an outcome of this great new era of pretending in our modern ideological banana republic. Hey, Wall Street is built upon a foundation of lies, insider trades on proprietary information and manipulation of values, so why shouldn’t everything else – including govt economic data? Fair’s fair, right?
Despite my dripping sarcastic snark, I’m not joking. This is the reality. I know them. I taught some of the people who taught them.
That said, there is a possibility, given the sheer scale of negative economic data, that our economy is contracting so deep and so fast the BEA statisticians will not be able to compensate (lie) to hide the economic reality. The BEA may indeed be forced to admit the U.S. economy is shrinking again in the second quarter as it was in the first.
Technically that result would mean we are officially in an economic recession, two quarters of negative GDP growth. However, keeping the ideology in the forefront, such a result will bring forth a new era of economic analysis to redefine what “recession” means. That is exactly what BEA Research Associate Jeffrey Frankel is doing.
Jeffrey Frankel is Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is also a member of the Business Cycle Dating Committee, which officially declares recessions. (LINK)
Mr. Frankel is busy redefining and rewriting years of economic acceptance to say that two quarters of negative economic growth no longer defines a recession. [Example Here] I’m not going to post his nonsense but go read it, because the media is about to start promoting it. That’s how his tribe rolls.
As noted in the financial shape shifting of Mr. Frankel, on a technical basis water is not wet – it is simply lacking dryness. Technically, “wet” is a condition that is created by water on other objects; therefore, water by itself is not wet. Water makes other things wet. If you understand the parseltongue, you will understand what the BEA is likely to deliver on July 28th.
In the meantime, unavoidable supply-side inflation continues to skyrocket as the prices of everything attached to the energy sector continues to rise. Everything is connected to the energy sector. As a result, we are now in the very first stages of the Building Back Better program. We have only just crossed the threshold into an economic era that will last for at least (my estimation) two decades.
The western democracies, now run by unilateral fiat and dictators empowered by their COVID-19 inflation, that received no push-back, are detaching the western economic system from oil, coal and natural gas. This will drop the standard of living in all of the nations attached to the policy (in yellow) and will create a massive surge in the wealth of the nations who do not go along with the ideological quest (in gray).
Here is where the fun, not really, starts.
The subset of “spread the wealth” ideologues are in alignment with the outcomes of the “climate change” ideologues. The climate change elites are going to give the anti-colonialists what they have always dreamed of. A world where the economics are reversed, and third world countries have the opportunity to catch up and even surpass the wealth of the western colonialists.
From the perspective of the insanely politically correct and culturally Marxist crews in/around the think tanks of Berkely, Chicago and New York, the Build Back Better alliance will accomplish for them, everything their guilt-ridden Fabian socialist minds desire. The white people (in yellow) will finally be deindustrialized so the brown people (in grey) can rise, and an equitable balance will be restored upon the planet.
If you think that sounds weird, you weren't paying attention to this guy’s crew:
Joe Biden is an avatar; a political pawn; a cognitively declining guy who has no idea what is happening around him.
The people behind the Biden administration, those in real control of what this is about, have not hidden their goals and aspirations.
These are not stupid people.
They are scheming, conniving, ideological, ever-planning, ever-manipulating & Machiavellian types within the political system, lusting for power, influence and affluence.