Distracting Attention With A Statistical Illusion

"The bottom line is that now certain private sector salaries (in R&D and entertainment) will be counted twice and public pension contributions will be counted even if they aren't made.

The economy will not actually be any larger or grow any faster, but the statistics will claim otherwise.

With the stroke of a pen, our debt to GDP ratio will come down. Will this soothe the fears of our creditors? Will critics of big government take comfort that spending as a share of GDP may be lower?

My guess is that the government is confident that its trick will work, and that distracting attention with a statistical illusion is the sole motivation for the change." - in Finance Townhall, an excerpt from a text about the new methods of calculating Gross Domestic Product (GDP)


Peter Schiff is a well-known commentator appearing regularly on CNBC, TechTicker and FoxNews. He is often referred to as "Doctor Doom" because of his bearish outlook on the economy and the U.S. Dollar in particular. Peter was one of the first from within the professional investment field to call the housing market a bubble. Peter has written a book called "Crash Proof" and a follow-on called "The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets". He is the President of EuroPacific Capital, which is a brokerage specializing in finding dividend-yielding, value-based foreign stocks.