The official bean counters say that GDP grew by 3.3% in the second quarter. Naked Capitalism argues that this is the result of lies. I say it is the result of incompetence. Unlike Yves, I don’t find it hard to believe that the government can not keep track of its expenditures in very well.

Also, it has been known for a while that the government is not properly accounting for inflation. This is long standing I don’t think you can say that it is being done by one administration for political reasons.Since inflation picked up sharply in the second quarter, it stands to reason that this distorted the statistics by more then usual. I don’t think we need to hint that somebody went out there way to manipulate the statistics.