COLUMN: We are faced with disinformation

Have you ever wondered why when someone expectorates in Greece the stock market goes down? I am being facetious of course but it seems as though about every other day the United States stock market goes up or down depending on what the “gurus” think is happening in Greece. Reminds me a bit about the story of “chicken little”.

Another bit of chicanery that bedevils us is the manipulation of the price of crude oil. I recall when it was decided by the new order that the leader of Libya would have to be done away with. The price of crude would have to go up because of the disruption of supply from Libya. Balderdash, Libya has never supplied more than 2% of the world output and that could and was replaced immediately from other sources. Now the Iranians are threatening to stop the flow of oil tankers through the Straits of Hormuz.         I hardly think so with our United States Navy sitting nearby. That, however, does not keep the manipulators from sticking it to us again.

Let us look at the historical record of crude prices per barrel (ppb) as of the middle of January for the past several years:

January 14, 2009 ppb $36.51; January 15, 2010 ppb $78.00: January 14, 2011 ppb $91.54; January 13, 2012 ppb $98.70. What has really changed over the past 3 years other than a precipitous increase in the price of a barrel of crude?

From my records of gasoline (regular grade) purchased from the same station in corresponding months: January, 2009 $1.78; January, 2010 $2.64; January, 2011 $2.89; January, 2012 $3.30 and it has increased another $0.12 at the time of this writing with the ppb ($98.71) approximately the same as on January 13, 2012. You can draw your own conclusions. By the way, in my opinion, we could solve our crude oil problem if the naysayers would get out of the way and let us recover oil within the United States.

Another area where we are fed information which is somewhat misleading is in the figures produced regarding the nations’ unemployment situation. We are told by our newspapers and nightly news that the rate for the unemployed is about 8.3% and this is a cause for rejoicing. That number and those presented over the past few years is coldly calculated to create the illusion that unemployment is becoming manageable.

Austen Goolsbee, a former economic advisor to President Obama is quoted as saying “I don’t think we should forget that as bad as the unemployment rate has been, the actual job situation in the country has been worse than that because of the ways they don’t get measured. What the unemployment rate does not measure is those without jobs who have simply given up.”

Matt Macdonald, an analysis at Hamilton Place Strategies says “It does not include the number of people who have become discouraged and are just not looking for a job at all. Those are not captured in the headline numbers that we see every month.”

It is estimated that some 4 million people fall into that category and another 8 million have been forced, by circumstances, to accept only part time work although they would rather be fully employed.

If those people were factored into the figures presented then the unemployed/underemployed would be on the order of 15% plus.

John Lott, an economist and author of “More Guns, Less Crime”, states that the reported 8.3% unemployment rate is still 0.5% higher than when the current administration took office.  In January of 2009 it was reported that 11.6 million Americans were out of work and that 23% of them had been unemployed for more than 6 months. Today there are12.8 million unemployed and 43% have been without a job for more than 6 months Even the Congressional Budget Office, in its latest projections, predicts that the rate will climb to 8.9% in the last quarter of 2012 and to 9.2% for the quarter of 2013.

Consider those numbers from an agency that is normally conservative in its numbers and relate them to the under reported numbers given above and it would appear, at least to me, that this nation is in for a long period of unease.

VERITAS

Bayne’s column appears every Sunday. He is an author and historian. He lives in Culpeper. Email: walking.h.farm@hughes.net