Last year, just before the election, the Labor Department released the unemployment numbers as dropping from 8.1% to 7.8%. Jack Welch famously tweeted that the number was phony and he was instantly attacked for saying so. There was quite a back and forth with many others of us saying  the unemployment number made no sense. Now it turns out the numbers were fabricated for the election so Obama could say, look at what a great job I am doing. They guy who fabricated the numbers has now publicly said he did it at the instruction of higher ups.

If we can’t believe the Labor Dept numbers we have a real problem since the Fed says the key number for QE is the unemployment rate. Much better number is ADP which has been redone by Mark Zandi and is now far more accurate than it once had been. Also look at participation rate and U-6 which is the real unemployment and underemployment number which is stuck around 13.5% for many months. If we now find that the unemployment rate is also subject to lies by the administration, then nothing is reliable when it comes to government stats.

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