"F. George McDuffee" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 2 Apr 2008 13:10:00 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

I haven't seen what
the Fed has been saying about it lately so I don't know what the official
position is.
=============
In your opinion, how much credibility does the data from the Fed,
BLS, etc. now have?

Which data? As long as you understand how the data is delimited and defined,
and as long as you read the methodology, I think you can rely on all of the
major indicators. I know from experience that some of the minor data
collected from the BEA is not accurate, but you would know that if you read
the methodology for collecting it. For their purposes, using it as a minute
piece of a cumulative statistic, it was fine. For my purposes (writing about
world trade) it was not. But we fixed that. The BEA was ready to change
their data-gathering method for that piece of the pie, and we just prodded
them a bit.

A bigger issue is the meaning of common indicators, such as GDP. You have to
know what it's really telling you, and which conclusions you can and can't
draw from it. The reason for this is that the indicators are created for one
purpose, but they often get used for purposes for which they aren't suited.

--
Ed Huntress