The MSM can no longer be trusted. Their fact checkers are worse. We learned this before the bogus Russia collusion Mueller fraud was shared nightly for three years on every MSM channel.
Today we have another example of how the MSM will do all they can to denigrate and slander the Trump Administration and the American people.
The US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released their initial results for the GDP in the 2nd Quarter of 2020 on Wednesday. In the initial summary the BEA reported that Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 32.9 percent in the second quarter of 2020, according to the BEA’s initial estimate. But this estimate annualizes this quarter’s results and in essence multiplies by four quarters. The real decrease in GDP is 9.4 percent.
We have noted in prior editions that the BEA has released some questionable estimates in the past, seemingly overstating Obama’s GDP estimates initially and then downplaying these results in subsequent estimates. For President Trump the BEA appears to do the opposite. For example, we now know that the US GDP increased 3% in 2018 as noted in the additional supplement provided this quarter. When initial estimates came out, the BEA reported that the 2018 GDP increase was only 2.9%.
TRENDING: President Trump Suggests Delaying Election Until Americans Can Vote in Person
This result confirms that the only President since the great depression to not have at least one year with a GDP increase of at least 3% is President Obama.
But today’s story was about the change in GDP over the past quarter. What the BEA reported on their first page was that the GDP decreased by almost 33 percent in the 2nd quarter. But this estimate is very misleading. When you look at the actual numbers the change in GDP is much lower.
Depending on the numbers that you use from the report, the real change in GDP for the quarter is either 9.4 or 9.5 percent. For example, the seasonally adjusted GDP for the US for the second quarter landed at $19.41 trillion and the GDP at the end of the 2019 was $21.43 trillion. This is a decrease from the beginning of the year of 9 percent. The GDP at the end of Q1 was $21.56 trillion and therefore the GDP decreased by 10 percent. If you take the same calculation based on chained dollars in the report, the decrease in GDP in the second quarter is 9.4%.
Newsbusters reports the same:
It turns out the news media can’t even report bad news without making it worse. Multiple outlets pushed a false statistic that U.S. GDP fell 32.9 percent in the second quarter.
Fact: It fell 9.5 percent. Not 32.9 percent. The 32.9 percent figure is more than three times higher than what actually happened. The 32.9% figure is the “annual rate” of decline in GDP. But just don’t expect that to be reported properly by CNN, some of the breaking news headlines, or journalists and news outlets firing off wild tweets on Twitter.
The “annual” rate was less than the reported “34.7” percent decline economists were expecting.
Addressing misreporting by CNBC specifically, former NewsBusters contributing editor Thomas Blumer broke down on Facebook how the idea that U.S. GDP contracted by more than one-third is fake news. He wrote: “Second-quarter GDP did NOT ‘plunge by 32.9 percent.’ The government’s tables, excerpted below, tell us that annualized GDP fell from $19.0 trillion to $17.2 trillion. That’s a very serious decline, but it works out to -9.5% (most analysts effectively expected 10% or more), NOT -32.9%.”