Ein schön ironischer Kommentar zu den Reaktionen der Wirtschaftspresse auf die Ankündigung der letzten Woche, das BIP-Wachstum in USA sei um 3,5 % gewachsen. Im Doomsday-Thread habe ich bereits darauf hingewiesen, das 0,7 % davon allein auf extrem hohe Ausgaben der US-Regierung (insbesondere im Militärsektor) zurückgeht. Würde man diese 0,7 % abziehen, läge die BIP-Zahl bereits unter der Erwartung von 3 %.
Der Autor weist zudem unten darauf hin, dass viele große US-Zeitungen überhaupt nicht auf die hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit einer Revision dieser Zahlen hingewiesen haben. In der Vergangenheit wurde die BIP-Zahlen teilweise um 50 % revidiert!
Die US-Wirtschaftspresse (und die deutsche) verkaufen die News jedoch so, als wäre sie bare Münze.
The Business Press Maven
Maven: Macro MessBy Marek Fuchs
Special to TheStreet.com
2/3/2007 11:01 AM EST
To find words that sum up this week's coverage of macroeconomic numbers, The Business Press Maven must loll his way back to the Saturday Night Live of his youth:
Business media, you ignorant sluts.
You may think I'm going too far here (I sometimes resemble that accusation), but the little creatures of habit can't say they weren't warned. The dullards can't claim they don't deserve it.
Just look through this week's recycle bin. Reading the coverage of gross domestic product numbers and the savings rate figures that came out, the trusting among us were led to believe that the economy is in the most dire straits since Hoover -- and that it is growing at a speed approaching super strength.
Either something weird is going on here or my name is Daddy Warbucks.
First let's get to that gross domestic product number, reported on Wednesday. The initial-first-draft-preliminary-not-firm-enough-to-hang-your-hat-on number for fourth-quarter growth was 3.5%, significantly ahead of the 3% that was expected and a pace better than the two quarters that preceded it.
All in all, 3.5% stands as a real gangbuster number ... if it stands. Which is always the point. The Business Press Maven, as you many loyalists know, has never hit an issue harder.
Quite simply, the GDP numbers, released by the Commerce Department in first-draft form, are often revised to a significant degree. How significant? Well, you can read my old writing for all the examples -- but quite often the revisions are meaningful enough to cause a wholesale change in the perception of economic growth.
In the fourth quarter of 2005, for example (year before these latest numbers), the initial number came out at 1.1%, which resulted in hyperbolic headlines about an imminent recession. The revision came out at 1.6% -- which was still not great, but at 50% higher was clearly out of the danger zone.
The fourth quarter the year before that, too, we had to endure a whole wave of articles about how the economy had underperformed, dropping from 4% growth in 2003 to 3.1%. And the revision said? Um, 3.8% -- so it turns out that there essentially was no drop. My bad -- or, uh, their bad.
And yet we get to the fourth quarter this year, and guess what? The knuckleheads of the business media still don't mention the prospect that there might be revisions. Instead, they pontificate definite conclusions -- from a number the might as well be written in lemon ink.
To prevent this, I have tried everything, threatening everything from damaging certain people's typing fingers to throwing dirty martinis. Finally, last quarter, I really got mad. I threatened to weave the names of reporters who failed to note the chance of a revision into an insulting limerick. Business Press Maven nation, feed me all you can find. I will be publishing the limerick next week.
But look at The New York Times, which gets the dreaded Business Press Maven "Back of the Hand" award. Go over a Thursday report on the third-quarter numbers with a fine-toothed comb. You'll see mention of how the economy regained momentum, how it pulled out of a midyear slowdown, how people were spending money saved on gas, how the economy was much healthier than expected. On a skeptical note, we hear talk about how the first quarter of 2007 might not be as good, because the spending purportedly brought about by decreased gas prices will not materialize. But nothing -- NOTHING -- about a possible revision. A revision that could render some of those hard and fast conclusions -- especially about exceeding expectations -- totally moot.
It's a mockery of a tragedy of a sham of a mockery of a tragedy. And will wind its way into the limerick.
The Wall Street Journal, by modest contrast, mentions the prospect of a revision -- though not until the fifth paragraph and only to dismiss it:
"Though still subject to revisions," they write, "the solid GDP report amply exceeded economists' expectations."
Uh, dudes. We've had 50% revisions in the fourth quarter before. You might have to use fingers and toes on this, but the difference between 3.5% and the 3% that was expected is less than that.
In another article, the Journal swings from math-deficient to downright irresponsible, with a headline that the economy had "Busted Out."
From reporting on GDP, which was making it seem like the economy is undoubtedly surpassing all reasonable expectations (as you know, The Business Press Maven is quite positive on the economy, but puh-lease), let's go to those personal savings rate headlines that had us veering past Jane Curtin all the way back to the Great Depression.
Listen: Having low savings, as America does, is not good. That's what I tell Mrs. Maven every month. The larger point, though, is that not-good does not translate into on the lip of a Great Depression redux. And the savings rate numbers are even more flawed than the gross domestic product reporting.
The data were actually totally restructured a few years back, turning tons of negative savings rates into positive ones. And the issue of spending from savings -- when the size of retirement savings has become the greatest story in American personal finance history -- is, at least, complex enough that responsible media outlets should try to avoid making it seem like the only jobs we'll be getting in the coming years are from the Works Project Administration.
Business media, when it came to macroeconomic numbers, you really skeeved me this week. Stand by for that insulting limerick.
