Earlier today we reported that when it comes to one of the most important data series that feed directly into the US GDP calculation, namely construction spending, the US government admitted it had literally made up numbers for the past 10 years. The phrase used was "processing error":
The Ministry of Defense have announced that 6,000 Western troops led by Britain, the U.S., France, and Italy have invaded Libya after ISIS fighters hijacked a key oil port of Es Sider, thus threatening to take away control of the countries oil infrastructure currently supported by the West. However, the report also suggests that certain Nazi artefacts have been discovered in the region, which the US-UK led invasion is keen to take hold of.
Fourteen years after 9/11, the United States is still marching, undeterred by the millions killed and trillions of dollars wasted, towards something beyond grim, according to Riley Waggaman of Russia Insider who writes: “Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.” So begins Thoreau’s greatest treatise against trains and fools with too much money, Life Without Principle. (And not to spoil the gripping plot, but Thoreau argues that we do not spend our lives particularly well.
Jackson Country, Oregon, have joined an ever-increasing number of “GE-free” areas in the U.S., where farmers do not cultivate GMO crops. It’s the eight county in the country to ban the practise of GE farming, as farmers across the land drop producing GMO crops en masse. Washingtonpost.com reports: The Jackson County designation was made final on Dec. 22, when a federal judge approved a consent decree protecting the zone.
Even as increasingly more parts of the economy, especially those with exposure to manufacturing and industrial production, sink into the recessionary quicksand, one sector that was seen as immune from the malaise gripping US manufacturing and was outperforming the overall growth rate of the US economy, was housing, and specifically spending on private and public construction: a direct input into the GDP model.