> . Counting public pension fund contributions as personal,
> rather than government, savings also seems pretty reasonable.
True. It is the timing that seems suspicious to me. The absolute value of the old savings rate wasn't that meaningful anyway; what mattered was the relentless downward trend. A negative savings rate did make for a pretty effective sound bite against all this new era bullshit. No more.
> But the
> set of changes related to the CPI - which have rippled through the
> statistical machinery, resulting in better looking growth and
> productivity numbers - are pretty smelly.
Casi nada lo del ojo, y lo lleva en la mano. CPI directly affects just about everything else, so if it is cooked, wouldn't nearly all the important gummint stats be affected as well?
Did you ever found out what the GDP growth rate would have been ex-computers? The BLS itself admitted that without "quality improvements" in computers the CPI over the last year would have been 1 point higher.
> Doug
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