The reason is that seasonal adjustments have made virtually every data set a load of garbage, with little relevance to the real world.
Consider the latest nonfarm payroll number, where the seasonally adjusted print came at a shocking 517K, but only thanks to a near record seasonal adjustment factor which transformed a 2.5 million decline into a blowout gain which had a profound impact on market - and Fed psychology.
Or what about the latest retail sales, which also shocked to the upside, but only after generous seasonal adjustments - which are based on just some excel modeling (and a few political taps on the shoulder) converted the traditionally weak January into a blowout month.
It's not just plain vanilla economic data: it now appears that arbitrary - and massive - seasonal adjustments are also hitting the weekly DOE oil inventory report: the past two weeks, when we saw near record inventory builds, were nothing more than the figment of some excel spreadsheet's imagination because as the chart below shows, that's when the DOE Crude Oil supply "adjustment" factor was one of the highest on record.
The Everything Bundle – The Sampler of Liberty!
Give me Liberty... and give me more! The Everything Bundle includes the latest version of our flagship book on government, along with a collection of potentially life-altering introductions to anarchy, agorism and voluntaryism.
“Government” – The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed! by Etienne de la Boetie2 - How inter-generational organized crime rus the "government", media and acadmia to tax-farm populations.
The Liberator is a 64GB wafer flash drive filled with books, documentaries, podcasts, MP3s, short videos, and music from the truth movement’s leading artists. The credit card-sized format makes it convenient to keep in your wallet to share and copy easily.
Anarchy Exposed! - A former police officer reports on his investigative journey by Shepard the Voluntaryist and Larken Rose
The Most Dangerous Superstition by Larken Rose - The ultimate expose on the illegitimacy and illogicalness of "Government"
Sedition, Subversion and Sabotage – Field Manual #1 by Ben Stone, The Bad Quaker, and Ken Yamarashi
What Anarchy Isn’t – A short pamphlet by Larken Rose… The perfect introduction to peaceful anarchy
Three Friends Free – A Children’s Story of Voluntaryism
