Distortions from bad GDP reporting have major impact within the financial system

http://www.shadowstats.com/article/gross_domestic_product

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is one of the broader measures of economic activity and is the most widely followed business indicator reported by the U.S. government. Upward growth biases built into GDP modeling since the early 1980s, however, have rendered this important series nearly worthless as an indicator of economic activity. The analysis in this Installment will indicate that the recessions of 1990/1991 and 2001 were much longer and deeper than currently reported, and that lesser downturns in 1986 and 1995 were missed completely in the formal GDP reporting process. Furthermore, the current economic circumstance is suggestive of an early-1980s-style double-dip recession.

The distortions from bad GDP reporting have major impact within the financial system. For example, Alan Greenspan's heavy reliance on productivity gains to justify some of his policies is equally flawed, since the methods applied to GDP estimation influence the numerator in the productivity ratio. As with the CPI distortions discussed in Installment III, the Federal Reserve Chairman knows better.



With reported growth moving up and away from economic reality, the primary significance of GDP reporting now is as a political propaganda tool and as a cheerleading prop for Pollyannaish analysts on Wall Street.

So let's apply some critical thought here.

1.  Here we have an article claiming that GDP numbers are worthless.

2.  This article is published on a website that produces it's very own GDP numbers, though you can't see them unless you pay for either a six-month or annual subscription.

3.  A free chart that gives you a general idea about these alternate GDP numbers suggests that the economy has been in recession for the greater part of the last two decades.

That last one is worth restating.  ShadowStats suggests that - from the the year 1984 to present - the US economy has been in recession more often than not.  In fact, aside from a brief few months in 2004, ShadowStats tells us that the US economy has been in recession for the entire 21st century.  That is to suggest that the sum total value of all goods and services produced in the US is falling every year for the entire 21st century. For republicans, we made more stuff in 1999 than we did in 2014. Considerably more.  

So to conclude.  GDP numbers are a liberal conspiracy.  ShadowStats will sell you the "real" GDP numbers.  And those "real" GDP numbers tell us that the US has been in recession for most of the last two decades.

Now, when I see that, I say to myself "Aside from the obvious conflict of interest, I'm fairly certain that the US economy hasn't been in recession for the majority of the last two decades.  Being that the case, I'm not going to entertain these numbers or the underlying conspiracy theory."

This was free...

So was this free ..Looks like construction is up....

Yes, this is free as well, but if you want to see the numbers...

The content you have asked to look at is currently only available to SGS subscribers.

I agree that GDP may not be the most accurate representation of our economic production. There's a lot of useless crap in there that does maybe a few people some good financially, but there's, for example, pharmaceutical TV ads. We need to get back to the basics: manufacturing, growing sustainable food (instead of food that gets rejected by China and 30 other countries, clothing and other products using HEMP, etc. I was thinking about all those Bibles and other religious texts that were sent to Iraq during the war...how many trees did it take to print those? How much environmental damage was done in the process?...ad nauseum.