-
- (EIRNS) - On Sept. 27, the Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS) held a press conference to release details on how "a computer
glitch" on their part, had caused them to understate the annual rise
(year ending August) in the Consumer Price Index by 0.1%. Indeed.
-
- As most people who face paying bills well know, the Bureau's
Consumer Price Index annual inflation rate of 3.4%--now increased to 3.5%--is
actually far below the real inflation rate, which is well over 10% and
rising fast. Prices for health care, energy, housing, and all kinds of
basics are soaring. The BLS and the Federal Reserve are blatantly lying.
-
- Apart from the blame-it-on-computers factor (a "software
problem," they said), the government's cost-of-living data are grossly
understated and manipulated, and have been for years. There are several
systematic frauds. One is the "core" CPI, by which energy and
food costs {are removed} from what's called the core Consumer Price Index,
on the rationalization that food and energy prices are "volatile"!
They say the core CPI went up only 2.5% last year!
-
- On Oct. 3, a statement put out by the Federal Reserve
Board's Open Market Committee said that today's increase in energy prices
is having a "limited effect on core measures of prices today."
-
- But the real doozy of a lie is the "Quality Adjustment
Factor." This means that Index statisticians can lower any price rise,
on the claim that the quality of the product went up, so {its increased
price can be adjusted downward}. If you want to look up the so-called theory
on this con game, it's called "hedonics." (Try "Palgrave's
Dictionary of Economics," London: Macmillan.)
-
- Lyndon LaRouche blew the whistle on that one over 15
years ago, and the EIR News Service was publishing detailed documentation
of the Federal Reserve/BLS flimflam as early as 1983.
-
- On the latest revelations of the Bureau of Labor Statistics'
small admission of culpability, LaRouche commented that the BLS practices
should "be considered as typical of the way in which willful fraud
and elementary incompetence are combined, to shape the current standards
of accounting practice adopted by both Wall Street's financial houses and
law firms, and the related official functions of the U.S. government."
LaRouche is writing a policy document on this fakery.
-
- - LaRouche's 1983 Warning -
-
- In the EIR's Oct. 4, 1983 edition, an article by Richard
Freeman reported that the Federal Reserve, in collusion with the BLS, had
been concocting such fraudulent factors, and using them to overstate production
levels, while the BLS understated inflation, since 1967.
-
- According to examples gleaned by EIR research at that
time, one could conclude "that the real inflation rate since 1967,
could have been one-third to one-half higher, or double, the `official'
rate reported."
-
- In a half-hour TV campaign broadcast on ABC-TV Feb. 4,
1984, Presidential candidate LaRouche presented the Quality Adjustment
Factor hoax, plus another called the "Production Adjustment Factor."
LaRouche stated that he and EIR had determined that the rate of inflation
in 1983 had been faked by as much as three times--and should have been
reported as three times higher than the official figures.
-
- The TV show featured this hilarious interchange (LaRouche
is speaking):
-
- "We also checked with some key officials at the
Federal Reserve itself.... Mary Hiliard, a Federal Industrial Index economist,
was infuriated by the mere fact we were investigating the Fed's work. So
she said to us:
-
- "'|f we gave you the equations, you could calculate
them [Production Adjustment Factors,] but I will not release them. You'd
better drop it before I get angry with you. You've already made several
people around here very angry, asking about this.'
-
- "We had two conversations with the boss, the Fed's
Associate Director for Research and Statistics.... Mr. Helmut Wendel said
to us:
-
- "'| told Mary Hilliard not to release the extrapolation
equations for the Production Adjustment Factor to you, because they really
don't work. Most of what goes into the PAFs is judgmental. The reason we
don't release them is that other people would use them, but no one would
ever get the results we get.... They would predict [the Index] wrong, and
get mad at us.'"
-
- - Bilking People -
-
- Now, if the statistical fraud were this bad under Reagan,
do you really think it's better today? People have paid an awful lot for
failing to have listened to EIR and LaRouche.
-
- "Lies About Inflation Are Being Used To Loot the
Population," is the title of a six-page feature study by Richard Freeman,
in a recent (Sept. 29) EIR, on how people are bilked. He gives documentation
to show that the annual loss to people--the amount their pockets are picked
by this understating of their cost of living--is in the range of $150 to
$300 billion. This is the range of money being held back from those with
job contracts, Social Security, eligibility for Food Stamps, and other
categories, where money coming to them is tied, directly or informally,
to a cost-of-living index.
-
- Additional categories directly affected include Veterans
Benefits, Workmen's Compensation, Unemployment Insurance, and Medicare.
Tens of millions of people are thus robbed.
-
- The admitted "computer glitch" of last week,
by itself, has a seemingly small numerical effect, when calculating the
impact on one single person. The Bureau of Labor Statistics last week said
that each one-tenth of a percentage point rise in the Consumer Price Index
is worth about 79 cents a month to an average Social Security recipient,
or $9.49 over the course of the year. But think of the gigantic effect
when the costs of the whole range of deceit are calculated through. _____
-
-
- This article was in New Federalist newsweekly, Oct. 9.
A free copy of it, PLUS the Sept. 29 Executive Intelligence Review, which
includes a detailed 6-page study (with graphs) on this and a big package
on "the third and final energy hoax," will be sent free to anyone
who calls 1-888-EIR-3258 and says they "saw it on Rense.com."
-
-
- MainPage
http://www.rense.com
-
-
-
- This
Site Served by TheHostPros
|