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.
We offer an exposé of the problems within the reporting system, and an assessment of underlying economic reality, through two basic services:
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Subscription includes access to all back issues
and SGS Alternate Data Series.
"John Williams' Shadow Government Statistics" is an electronic newsletter service that exposes and analyzes flaws in current U.S. government economic data and reporting, as well as in certain private-sector numbers, and provides an assessment of underlying economic and financial conditions, net of financial-market and political hype.
• The newsletter service includes frequent postings of communications related to regular economic and financial market reporting and to special developments in those areas, averaging more than one posting per week. A full, formal newsletter is published generally eight or more times per year. It is supported regularly by interim "Flash Updates" and "Alerts," which cover, and keep current, key economic reports and issues, and which address unusual developments. The service is supplemented by occasional Special Issues. The service also continues to evolve, based upon subscriber needs and input, with increasing reliance on "Flash Updates" and "Alerts" recently in response to unusual financial-market and economic conditions. (See "Newsletter Coverage" below for the publication's regular scope of coverage.)
• Subscription service provides website access to current and archived newsletter content, data on proprietary alternate estimates of the CPI, Unemployment and the GDP, an ongoing estimate of M3 growth -- where the M3 series no longer is reported by the Federal Reserve -- and a financial-weighted index of the U.S. dollar. Also available is an inflation calculator that estimates comparative prices between any two months, 1913 to date, using both the official CPI and the SGS-alternate measure. Postings to the website of all new material are advised directly to subscribers by e-mail.
Payment Methods We accept payment by either check or credit card. For credit-card payments, we use PayPal as our processor. (You need not have a PayPal account to use this vehicle.) All amounts due are payable in U.S. dollars.
Newsletter Coverage The full newsletter includes regular coverage and analysis of the economy and the broad financial markets, with key details updated as necessary:
- "Opening Comments" provides an overview of current economic and financial-market conditions and developments.
- The "Reporting Focus" section covers the prior month's economic reporting (employment/unemployment, CPI, GDP, money supply, retail sales, housing statistics, factory orders, trade balance, consumer confidence, purchasing managers' survey, short-term credit measures, federal budget deficit and others), including estimates of actual results net of any reporting biases. Also provided are annual reviews of the U.S. government's GAAP-based financial statements and estimates of income variance.
- Further, the coming month's reporting is examined, highlighting unusual circumstances and biases that could bring results in above or below market expectations.
- The "Markets Focus" section assesses circumstances in the U.S. equity and credit markets, as well as circumstances as they relate to the U.S. dollar and gold markets.
- The "Reporting/Market Focus" details the background of government series or special items affecting the markets, along with updates to changes in reporting methodologies.
- The newsletter content is updated regularly and kept current with frequent Flash Updates and occasional interim Alerts and Special Issues that highlight unusual developments or topics of special interest.
Examples of past Newsletters, Flash Updates and Alerts are open to non-subscribers on this Archives page. Look in the right-hand column for "open" material.
We like to gain some firsthand knowledge about our subscribers in the belief that, over time, this helps a great deal in fashioning services that are most suited and responsive to client needs. To further this goal, subscribers are invited to have direct phone or e-mail communication with John Williams during the term of the subscription. We look forward to serving you and hope you will subscribe today!
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 more than 25 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. -- John Williams
