The B.S. Is Flying At Us Everyday Now

Two more Government propaganda agencies released extremely misleading data this morning.

First, the Census Bureau released its estimate for April retail sales.  The headlines flashed in big bright lights that retail sales increased a "seasonally adjusted" .1% over March.  The March number was originally reported at -.4% but was revised lower to -.5% - or down from February.

Now here's the interesting part:  if you go by the not seasonally adjusted estimated number, sales for April actually declined from March by 2.5%.  That's quite a bit different from the fabled headlines everyone will see or hear today.  Here's the data:  LINK  And a negative reading is more consistent with the wholesale sales number released last Thursday by the Commerce Department, which showed that wholesale sales posted their biggest drop in four years:  LINK

You would at least think that if the Government was going to paint a big lie, they could at least get their various statistical departments to cooperate with each other so that the lies are consistent across the data.

An even bigger joke is that Bloomberg News reported today that Wall Street dealers are now forecasting that the U.S. Treasury will reduce the size of upcoming Government Treasury auctions due to "soaring revenue" and based on the CBO's recent estimate that the Government will run only an $845 billion deficit for fiscal 2013. 

Now, part of the problem with this idea is that for the first 7 months of FY 2013, the Federal debt load has gone up by $700 billion.  The only reason the debt goes up is because revenues are not covering spending - i.e. a true $700 billion cash spending deficit.  In terms of the timing of cash flows, we know that the Treasury received a big balloon payment in December as wealthy people sold down taxable assets and paid the gains on them ahead of the Jan 1 tax increases.  Moreover, the first few months of the year thru April account for a disproportionate amount of tax revenues for obvious reasons.  So, is tax revenue really "soaring?"  LOL

The bigger part of this CBO joke is the incredibly poor track record that the CBO has in forecasting debt levels and spending levels.  As Zerohedge pointed out back in February, in 2001 the CBO projected that by 2011 the Treasury would have a balance sheet surplus of $2.4 trillion - i.e. no debt.   Instead, the actual number was a debt load of $10.4 trillion.  Just a slight miss there.  And a year ago, the CBO was forecasting that this year's deficit would be $585 billion.  Zerohedge Link

Obviously, going by the monthly run-rate already experienced in 2013 for the first 7 months, the Government is running roughly a $100 billion per month deficit.  Unless the Government can figure out a way to recreate the one-time surge in revenues that occurred in December and maintain income tax revenues at the same run-rate as they were thru April 15, I would expect that the Government, short of using some accounting tricks, will continue to run about $100 billion per month deficit thru the September FY-end, for a total spending deficit of $1.2 trillion.

The point of all this is that the garbage coming of out of DC and NYC on a daily basis keeps getting bigger, more rotten and more foul-smelling.  And I'm sure most of you don't care - I do or I wouldn't have brought this up - but the immigration reform bill going through Congress right now contains language buried in it that mandates the establishment of a database that records and keeps biometric data on every single citizen of the U.S.:  LINK  All I can say to that is that anyone who doesn't think George Orwell's vision was accurate is an idiot.

If they wanted to eliminate illegal immigration, they should just cut back on welfare and social security disability by about 50%, because it would force people who are otherwise capable of working to do the jobs that illegal immigrants are willing to do.