Tag: John Williams

Nov 09 2010

Better-than-expected jobs report is bullshit.

As Harry Frankfurt duly noted (pdf), “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.”  Obama’s awkward relationship with the truth consists, in part, of bluffing, bullshitting, and lying his way deeper into our economic morass.

Paul Craig Roberts:

If we cannot trust what the government tells us about weapons of mass destruction, terrorist events, and the reasons for its wars and bailouts, can we trust the government’s statement last Friday that the US economy gained 151,000 payroll jobs during October?

Apparently not. After examining the government’s report, statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reported that the jobs were “phantom jobs” created by “concurrent seasonal factor adjustments.” In other words, the 151,000 jobs cannot be found in the unadjusted underlying data. The jobs were the product of seasonal adjustments concocted by the BLS.

As usual, the financial press did no investigation and simply reported the number handed to the media by the government.

Dec 15 2009

Stonewalling of Torture Evidence in Britain

A couple of months ago, the British High Court ruled that a document containing information on the torture of Binyam Mohamed should be disclosed in full.  The original document supposedly contains seven paragraphs which describe the brutal methods used to interrogate Mohamed, including waterboarding and slicing his genitals with a scalpel.

David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary who has been resisting the High Court’s efforts to release the document, now describes the decision as irresponsible.

David Miliband accused the two senior judges of irresponsibly “charging in” to a diplomatically sensitive area over what happened to former terror detainee Binyam Mohamed while held by the Americans in Pakistan.

Jonathan Sumption QC, appearing for the Foreign Secretary, told the Court of Appeal the judges’ stance was “both, in many respects, unnecessary and profoundly damaging to the interests of this country.”

Mr Sumption added: “I would go so far as to say their views were irresponsible.”