Fake News - Some of it Coming from Real  Sources - the Government

There was not much real data this week. The headlines we received this week were that "Fake News" that mislead the American Voters in the days, weeks, and months leading up to the elections. There was news that the election was stolen from Hillary Clinton because she won the popular vote (based primarily on the vote in California and Washington DC.) We supposedly received great news on Retail sales, the unemployment claims numbers, and New Housing Starts.

What is fake? What is real?

(Nov 15) The first bot of news reported in this column was the October monthly retail sales (MARTS) report. This was supposed to be a strong report. It was supposed to report an increase of 1% from the prior month and 5% from the prior year. It was supposed to be a good report. Forbes reported that it revealed better than expected increase in sales (0.8% vs 0.6%) and that it spelled trouble for Brick and Mortar stores as non-store retail continues its decades long surge. CNBC also reported a better than expected surge. This column had a different take.  "October Retail Sales Unremarkable" found that retail sales were slowing and that Six Sectors had lower sales than October of last year. Where CNBC and Forbes were basing their reporting on the seasonally adjusted data reported in the MARTS report this column focused on the real data, non-seasonally adjusted, and the changes from October to October. Retail sales were down from last October's levels for Furniture sales, Electronics and Appliance Sales, Clothing, General Merchandise, Hobby and Gasoline sales. The same year growth is at 2.95% (January through October) not 5%. Who have the fake news?

(Nov 16) Last week was a busy week. "Nobody" covers the weekly unemployment claims report. This column used to run a forecast column and a results column. Last week was a busy week crunching data prior to the election and after the election. The weekly unemployment claims report data had to wait until this week. The "Nov 10 : Unemployment Claims Rising" article detailed how the data has been manipulated. There is now first-time claims streak that started during March of 2015. The data is not as good as it is being reported. More fake news.

(Nov 18) The rest of the world thought that the monthly New Construction data was huge. It wasn't. While everyone else was touting a spike in starts of 25% this column was digging into the data. "Constrained October New Construction Data" reported that Starts and Completions are slower than what we saw during 1983, 1992, and 2007. While the data is doing better than it was during 2008-2015, this is like saying that a patient who came out of a coma is doing better than while he was in the coma. We were in a housing coma. Single family starts were slower during October than we saw during 1982-2007. Who is reporting fake news now?

Workers and Consumers cannot seasonally adjust themselves into seasonally adjusted jobs or incomes. We cannot seasonally adjust down the price of strawberries or blueberries. Why should the government be allowed to live in Governmentland while we have to live in reality?

It's the economy.