John
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Shadow Government Statistics
Analysis Behind and Beyond Government Economic Reporting
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Latest Newsletter Commentaries
Articles marked Subscription required require an SGS subscription.   
No. 319: Second-Quarter GDP Revision Subscription required August 27th, 2010
• Second-Quarter GDP Revised to 1.6% from 2.4% • Deteriorating Economic Data Eventually Should Disrupt U.S. Financial Markets More ...
No. 318: July Home Sales, Durable Goods Orders Subscription required August 25th, 2010
• Housing Market Stress Deepens Irrespective of Wild Reporting • Durable Goods Orders Almost Flat Despite Aircraft Boost • Census Payrolls Down 116,000 in August More ...
No. 317: July Housing Starts, Production and PPI Subscription required August 17th, 2010
• July Housing Starts Below Initial June Reporting, Suggestive of Third-Quarter GDP Contraction • July Industrial Production Boosted by Seasonal Disruptions • Annual PPI Inflation Rose to 4.2% in July More ...
No. 316: CPI Inflation, Retail Sales, Trade and Liquidity Subscription required August 15th, 2010
• July Annual Consumer Inflation: 1.2% (CPI-U), 8.6% (SGS) • Retail Sales Hint at Third-Quarter GDP Contraction • Widening Trade Deficit Will Dampen GDP in Revision • Economic and Liquidity Crises Continue More ...
No. 315: Updated Outlook, July Employment and Unemployment Subscription required August 6th, 2010
• Re-Intensifying Depression Foreshadows Great Crises • July Payrolls Fell 131,000, Gained 12,000 Ex-Census Layoffs • June's 100,000 Ex-Census Payroll Gain Revised to 4,000 • July Employment Dropped by 159,000 (Household Survey) • July Unemployment: 9.5% (U.3), 16.5% (U.6), 21.7% (SGS) More ...
No. 314: Updated July Employment Outlook Subscription required August 5th, 2010
• Labor Conditions Likely Worse than Consensus • Timing for Next Phase of Crises Coming into Better Focus  More ...
No. 313: Second-Quarter GDP and Revisions Subscription required July 30th, 2010
• Worst Economic Downturn Since World War II Just Got Worse • Bulk of First-Half GDP Growth Due to Inventories, Setting Up Likely Third-Quarter Contraction • Lingering Market Hopes for Recovery Should Fade Quickly More ...
No. 312: Durable Goods, Home Sales, Upcoming GDP Revisions Subscription required July 28th, 2010
• Restated Downturn Should Be More Severe • Nonsense Home-Sales Reporting • Roughly 144,000 Census Jobs Lost in July More ...
No. 311: June Housing Starts Subscription required July 20th, 2010

• Housing Starts Show Bottoming-Bouncing, Approaching Renewed Decline More ...
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Have you ever wondered why the CPI, GDP and employment numbers run counter to your personal and business experiences? The problem lies in biased and often-manipulated government reporting.

John Williams'
"Shadow Government Statistics"

johnwilliams@shadowstats.com
Tel: (415) 512-7701

American Business Analytics & Research LLC
The Hearst Building
5 Third Street, Suite 1301
San Francisco, CA 94103
Welcome to ShadowStats.com

Beyond the SGS Newsletter subscription services, which provide access to all material including Commentaries and databases for the SGS Alternate Data, significant material is provided free of charge to the public on this Web-site, including a Primer Series on key economic reporting, opened back-issues of the newsletter and Special Reports, and an expanding library of charts monitoring official data, as well as graphs of our own Alternate estimates.

Alternate Data
Charts of Historical Alternate Data for the U.S. GDP, CPI, M3 & Employment. Money Supply, M3 Chart
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Specialized Economic Consulting
Services include customized forecasts and analyses of the general economy, presentations and consultations in-house for clients. Contact us to discuss your needs.
Some Biographical & Additional Background Information

Walter J. "John" Williams was born in 1949. He received an A.B. in Economics, cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 1971, and was awarded a M.B.A. from Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Business Administration in 1972, where he was named an Edward Tuck Scholar. During his career as a consulting economist, John has worked with individuals as well as Fortune 500 companies.

Formally known as Walter J. Williams, my friends call me John. For nearly 30 years, I have been a private consulting economist and, out of necessity, had to become a specialist in government economic reporting.

One of my early clients was a large manufacturer of commercial airplanes, who had developed an econometric model for predicting revenue passenger miles. The level of revenue passenger miles was their primary sales forecasting tool, and the model was heavily dependent on the GNP (now GDP) as reported by the Department of Commerce. Suddenly, their model stopped working, and they asked me if I could fix it. I realized the GNP numbers were faulty, corrected them for my client (official reporting was similarly revised a couple of years later) and the model worked again, at least for a while, until GNP methodological changes eventually made the underlying data worthless.

That began a lengthy process of exploring the history and nature of economic reporting and in interviewing key people involved in the process from the early days of government reporting through the present. For a number of years I conducted surveys among business economists as to the quality of government statistics (the vast majority thought it was pretty bad), and my results led to front page stories in the New York Times and Investors Business Daily, considerable coverage in the broadcast media and a joint meeting with representatives of all the government's statistical agencies. Despite minor changes to the system, government reporting has deteriorated sharply in the last decade or so.

An old friend -- the late-Doug Gillespie -- asked me some years back to write a series of articles on the quality of government statistics.  The response to those writings (the Primer Series available on this page) was so strong that we started Shadow Government Statistics in 2004. The newsletter is published as part of my economic consulting services.  -- John Williams

 




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