You can never actually see the ‘big picture.’ Instead, you look at statistics, such as GDP growth, unemployment, and inflation, that are supposed to describe it. But often, they are more fraud than fact. GDP figures count government spending as ‘output.’ But the more resources consumed by government, the less real wealth—valuable goods and services – are available for everyone else.

The unemployment numbers are similarly misleading. They count everyone with a job as ‘employed’ – whether he works 20 hours or 60, and whether he earns minimum wage or a million dollars. Lower unemployment doesn’t mean people are better off; after all, there was full employment in the Soviet Union.

And inflation? The statisticians don’t merely add up the prices at the grocery store or the latest real estate sales. They create ‘models’ that adjust prices according to their own cockamamie theories. If this year’s computer is faster than last year’s, for example, they’ll tell you that the price has gone down – even though you paid more for it.

Garbage in. Garbage out. The statistics are always contrived, revised, and largely fictitious. The data is fluid. And the theories – the Phillips Curve, the Fed’s ‘stochastic’ model, Keynesianism, Marxism, Modern Monetary Theory – are always imbecilic. Add as many Greek symbols as you want; they’re still nonsense.

-Bonner Research