…Every intelligence estimate, every budget number, every economic statistic put out by this administration has been bastardized. Who knows what the honest statisticians in the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other departments think-- they are obviously either being forced to doctor the numbers, or the political department is just redoing them in the dark of night and then inserted into publicly released documents.Under Reagan, folks complained about "rosy scenarios" where the budget office always picked the most optimistic estimates. That's not what's happening in the Bush administration, since even optimists can't buy these numbers. These are psychedelic scenarios, hallucinogenic tabs to distract the population from Bush's miserable failure on economic policy.
Posted by P6 at February 11, 2004 07:57 AM
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That's been my impression also. Brad De Long has been repeatedly explaining this as well. Usually economists are politically the most reliably conservative of the sciences, and so I've been watching for an economist who would spontaneously defend the fiscal policies of the Bush Administration, or even their version of economic reality. Some, like Mankiw, are reduced to sheer incoherent self contradiction.
It's hard to explain to non-economists how seldom anything coherent is heard from the WH in terms of plans, projections, or statistics. Usually the statistics are manufactured Soviet style.
Well, there's Larry Kudlow.
Posted by James R MacLean at February 12, 2004 05:03 AM