"F. George McDuffee" wrote in message
news
On Wed, 2 Apr 2008 23:00:12 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:
snip
GDP is becoming a less reliable indicator
of how much people are feeling in general.
snip
===============
Indeed, as it is becoming increasingly evident that much of the
reported "profits" either never existed (as anyone in their right
mind would define a profit) or are were not (and never will be)
"repatriated" into the US economy, where they would be taxed.

Many of the "reported" profits seem to have been paper or book
only, i.e. trading a 5 billion dollar cat for 10 billion dollar
dog, and posting a 5 billion dollar "profit" on the transaction.
This goes a long way to "explaining" how the financial services
sector was able to generate 40% of all corporate profits.

That's all true, and it's alarming to see how much of reported corporate
profit comes from the financial sector, but I'm not sure that has a lot to
do with GDP. Actual transactions are what they measure. I'd have to look
into it to see how much of that is funny-money financial transactions (but
I'm busy reading _The Nine_ right now, so someone else will have to do it).


The increasingly skewed distribution of the GDP is another
factor. The metric for this is called the GINI coefficient or
index. I know its hard to understand, but no matter how much
money the CEO pays himself, the ungrateful employees still insist
on feeling poor....

Someone is going to have to clarify this for the general press, and soon. We
don't get clear explanations of how income distribution is measured and
compared in the economics world. All we get is this smoke and mirrors game
from the current administration, based on playing shell games with income
quintiles. It really covers up the facts very effectively, and the press has
been compliant in reporting their nonsense.

--
Ed Huntress