By Dr. Tony Lima
For quite a few years my lovely wife has refused to believe any economic data from the U.S. government. Until recently, I have been a staunch defender of the statisticians and economists who work in various branches of the government. The four I use most often are the Bureau of Economic Analysis (Commerce), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Labor), the Treasury Department, and the Census Bureau (formerly in Commerce, stay tuned).
Much of the data supplied by these departments rely on Census to perform the actual survey work. Census has the tools for this and they have been in the survey business for a long time. Unfortunately, that also creates a single point of vulnerability. As far as anyone can tell, the Obama administration successfully exploited this vulnerability and produced false survey data. The falsification itself was not at all sophisticated. One or more Census employees simply made up numbers. John Crudele of the New York Post has covered this extensively. In yet another measure of how bad the “news” industry has become, Mr. Crudele remains almost entirely the sole source of this information.
