Month: August 2025 – י״ט באב תשפ״ה

Falsus in Numeris: Government Lies About Inflation, Unemployment, Whatnot

Newsflash: Governments Lie

08/12/2025
Ron Paul

Bureau of Labor Statistics head Dr. Erika McEntarfer is one of the latest persons President Trump has told “you’re fired.” President Trump said this month that he fired Dr. McEntarfer because the president believed she manipulated jobs data. Manipulations, he stated, include the updated May and June BLS numbers showing the U.S. economy created 258,000 fewer jobs than originally reported, as well as the weaker than expected July jobs report. All of this, the president suggested, was designed to make President Trump look bad.

Following Dr. McEntarfer’s firing, many commenters worried that President Trump’s actions would create the perception that government unemployment and inflation data is manipulated to produce the numbers desired by the president. A loss of confidence in government statistics could impact demand for US Treasuries. This is because the value of Treasuries is adjusted based on the BLS-issued Consumer Price Index (CPI). If investors don’t trust the CPI figures, they can demand higher returns, increasing government’s interest payments.

President Trump is correct that BLS manipulates statistics related to the economy, but it has been doing so since long before Donald Trump moved to the White House.

For example, starting in 1994, the BLS stopped including “discouraged” workers who have stopped looking for work in the official unemployment figures. The BLS also includes those working part-time as employed even if the only reason they are working part-time is they cannot find full-time work. According to John Williams, publisher of the website Shadow Stats, including discouraged and part-time workers who want full-time work in the unemployment figures increases the unemployment rate by almost 20 percent!

The government also understates the effects of inflation. One way it does this is by using “chained CPI.” Chained CPI means that even if price inflation has made steak unaffordable for most Americans, the government does not consider their standard of living lowered if they can buy a “substitute” such as hamburger.

This ignores the fact that if consumers viewed hamburger and steak as equivalent then they would likely have chosen cheaper hamburger before Federal Reserve-caused price inflation made steak unaffordable, leaving them no choice but to purchase hamburger. According to John Williams’s Shadow Stats, using a more accurate definition of inflation would increase the inflation rate to as much as 12 percent.

Manipulating the unemployment and inflation rates allows the government to gaslight the people into believing that the economy is strong and any signs of weakness — such as rising prices or an increase in unemployment in their town — are anomalies that do not reflect the economy’s real condition. Manipulating the inflation figures to understate the true amount of inflation also lowers the “cost of living” increases the government must provide for veterans, beneficiaries of Social Security, and others. This provides a way for government to cut spending without Congress members having politically difficult votes.

President Trump has done a service by highlighting that government statistics regarding the economy are manipulated. Many of those criticizing President Trump for endangering the “credibility” of government’s inflation and unemployment numbers are either unaware of, or more likely have no problem with, manipulating data to fool the public into thinking the welfare-warfare system and the fiat money system are “working.” They only object to manipulating the data to benefit President Trump. President Trump should ensure the government’s unemployment and inflation figures are as accurate as possible by appointing John Williams of Shadow Stats to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

From Mises.org, here.

History Rhymes – Germany Charges the Eternal Jew with Germany’s Crimes

On Germany’s arms embargo:

The conventional narrative is that they are trying to move from the defendant’s chair to the judge’s bench, to remove their creaking “historical burden”, their false and impossible “atonement”. The Jews are still their misfortune. But what they are actually trying to do, in the long term, is slither out of the electric chair.

The case against Aza’s “civilians” is the same against Germany’s so-called “civilians”. Their lives and property are all forfeit. Abject slavery until the end of time is too good for them. Germany tried to annihilate the Jewish nation, so they’re really attempting to defend themselves here, and they’re tellingly doing so by relapsing to their old identity. It’s easier than applying to the German Society for Humane Dying…

I do agree with them not selling weapons to Jews, or anyone else, for any reason or for no reason. (Hmm, they might not want those weapons used against Germany when we recover our Divine mandate to wipe out Amalek.) We don’t need you. But keep the “humanitarian” cant to yourselves!

The Germans try to forestall the obvious by “pointing to decades of cooperation”. Oh? Is Germany merely decades old?! There should never have been any kind of relationship with our murderers in the first place, but the State of Israel does whatever it likes (like actually getting Jews killed in Aza for the sake of looking nice and “proportional”, among other things), and Jews learn to bear it.

דמודי להון נפיל בידיהון, דמתרחיץ עליהון דיליה דילהון.

History is rhyming again. Germany is, after a fashion, once more tarring Jews as killers and murderers. After that short, dissonant pause, a brief “rupture in the fabric of reality”, the old waltz plays again.

Speaking of old songs, here’s an old one that feels apt. If they can quote Jews who “agree with them” Israel is killing “innocents” for Lebensraum, et cetera, I can surely quote Bertolt Brecht:

 

O Germany, Pale Mother!

Let others speak of her shame,
I speak of my own.

O Germany, pale mother!
How soiled you are
As you sit among the peoples.
You flaunt yourself
Among the besmirched.

The poorest of your sons
Lies struck down.
When his hunger was great.
Your other sons
Raised their hands against him.
This is notorious.

With their hands thus raised,
Raised against their brother,
They march insolently around you
And laugh in your face.
This is well known.

In your house
Lies are roared aloud.
But the truth
Must be silent.
Is it so?
Why do the oppressors praise you everywhere,
The oppressed accuse you?
The plundered
Point to you with their fingers, but
The plunderer praises the system
That was invented in your house!

Whereupon everyone sees you
Hiding the hem of your mantle which is bloody
With the blood
Of your best sons.

Hearing the harangues which echo from your house,
Men laugh.
But whoever sees you reaches for a knife
As at the approach of a robber.

O Germany, pale mother!
How have your sons arrayed you
That you sit among the peoples
A thing of scorn and fear!

Don’t know about you, but I hated having Germany (assuming their State reflects them any better than ours does us) “supporting” us against our other enemies. But ahhh! Jew-hatred is now no less stigmatized there than in the rest of Europe. And for any Yiddishe Nars still residing in Ashkenaz: Gut Morgen, Jude, und den Kaffee Riechen! They are back to massively rearming, too (under the rationale of the Russian-Ukrainian War). What could go wrong?

Nu. Just like that, the world makes sense again!