Last week some good news came out of Washington. A 7.2% increase in 3rd quarter economic growth.
In fact, it was announced as the strongest quarter of growth since 1984.
What struck me as interesting about this announcement was one number and a year. 7.2% and the year 1984.
Why? Because in the 4th quarter of 1999 the economy grew by 7.1%. Pay attention to that figure, folks... If Bushco had announced the economy grew at 7%, it would have hit the media as the strongest period of growth since President Bill Clinton was in office.
Well that's not good, the last thing Republicans want to remind people of is what a great economic steward we had with Bill Clinton. So it's better to announce 7.2%.
Well that's surely just a coincidence, right? I don't think so. The Bush administration has a habit of releasing preliminary figures that are somewhat exagerrated. They did it in the 2nd quarter of 2002 by claiming 5.8% when the final number turned out to be 5.0%. Also, the 7.2% number was considerably higher than what economists were predicting. They expected strong growth of 6.0-6.5%, but nothing quite near 7.2%.
So the 7.2% number was orchestrated. When we get final confirmation, the growth rate will have been lower.
But people won't hear about that, because the media doesn't print corrections in big bold 96 point headline fonts, and the Bush administration will simply say "Well we said the number was preliminary."
Anyway, I don't know how to counter this, but I just want to point out my suspicions of what's happening.