Trump and Hillary have come out with the obligatory “economic plans.” Neither them nor their advisors, have any idea about what really needs to be done, but this is of no concern to the media.

The presstitutes operate according to “pay and say.” They say what they are paid to say and that is whatever serves the corporations and the government. This means that the presstitutes like Hillary’s economic plan and do not like Trump’s.

One of my most popular columns was about escaping from the Matrix existence in which Americans live.  It is a world of disinformation and misinformation in which facts are fiction, and abstract theories are substituted for empirical reality.

Official government statistics are make-believe.  The government makes inflation and unemployment disappear by how it defines inflation and unemployment, and it makes the economy grow by how it defines Gross Domestic Product.  The definitional basis determines the statistical result.

My all time favorite TV series is "The Wire", which ran for 5 years on HBO. Throughout the series, the common thread was the affinity, by the police, the mayor, city politicians and even the drug lords, to "juke the stats". In other words, "tell them what they want to hear", and move on.

In this vein, I've been all over the econoblogosphere today and I'm surprised that this excellent article from Yves Smith hasn't gotten more attention.

Many of us here at EP, and elsewhere, have questioned the veracity of new data eminating from the Census Bureau, the BLS (a.k.a. Bureau of Lying Statistics) and other gov't agencies. In particular, any new reports pertaining to housing, unemployment levels and CPI must be taken with a heavy dose of skepticism.