Sunday, January 8, 2017

Facts and Then There are Parting Memos

For those who may have been examining this Blog over the past eight plus years one of our topics was the Romer Curve, which was the projection of unemployment

Now from the still current Administration comes a rewriting of history.
They state:

From its peak, the unemployment rate recovered to its pre-recession average in mid-2015 and continued to fall, standing at 4.6 percent as of November 2016. This rapid decline came far more quickly than most economists predicted: as recently as March 2014, private forecasters expected the unemployment rate to remain above 5.0 percent until at least 2020 (Figure 1). Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate, which has been subject to downward pressure due to the aging of the U.S. population, has been broadly stable since the end of 2013, as the strengthening labor market recovery has led workers to enter (or reenter) the workforce, offsetting downward pressure from demographic trends.

To examine the facts just go back and look at my Romer curve analyses. At NO time did any data appear as indicated above. By month we tracked the actual versus the Romer projections. Even using the recalculations which employed massive numbers removed from the possible employment roles.

History is written by the victors. Not clear yet who they may be but when data such as the above is presented when the real data based on the Romer memo disputes it, I truly wonder. But alas, they are but economists. Worse yet, they are politicians.