About That Revised 3Q16 GDP -- October 29, 2016

USC-LA Times Poll -- October 29, 2016

FBI Director Comey announced Clinton e-mail investigation re-opened one day earlier.

Unlikely that this poll reflects most recent news about Clinton e-mail scandal.

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GDP

Yesterday, the Obama administration announced that the US economy grew 2.9% in 3Q16, the fastest rate in two years.

It's hard for me to believe that bureaucrats can't fudge the data to get any number they are told. Had they been told to come up with 3.2%, they would have. I have no doubt.

So the question is not how do they arrive at 2.9% but rather, "how did they arrive at the decision to make 2.9% the target?"

The administration wanted a 3.0% or better revision but the bureaucrats knew that a 3.0% would not be credible. The GDP can't be an "even-3.0." So, it's either some number below 3 or some number above 3.

Below 3, the president is not happy, but at least Wall Street will "trust" the number, as will gullible Americans, like me. Above 3%, the president will be ecstatic (but he's gone in 80 days anyway) and there's no way Wall Street will believe a number greater than 3.0%, although, again, most gullible Americans, including me, would believe anything up to and including 3.9%.

So, the "deciders" said, "We'll go with 2.9%. It's almost enough to make the president happy and Wall Street will believe that number." To wit:

“This is a good, solid number,” said Gus Faucher, deputy chief economist at PNC Financial Services in Pittsburgh. “The economy is growing at a decent clip. Consumer spending will continue to lead growth, and the fundamentals there remain positive.”

And:

While the pace of economic growth in the third quarter fell well short of previous achievements, the latest data represented a significant improvement from the first half of 2016 and the best quarterly advance in two years.

Economists also said the gains were probably strong enough to reassure Federal Reserve policy makers that it was safe to raise the benchmark interest rate when they meet in December.

Short history:

As recently as October 18, 2016, the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, GA, using real numbers and real formulas, calculated that the 3Q16 GDP would be 1.9%.  To get from 1.9% to 2.9% is quite an achievement -- in less than two weeks, using almost the same numbers.

The day before the Obama administration announced the 2.9% GDP revision, the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, GA, forecast 2.1%, in line with what they had been predicting:

Latest forecast: 2.1 percent — October 27, 2016.

The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the third quarter of 2016 is 2.1 percent on October 27, up from 2.0 percent on October 19.

The forecast of the contribution of net exports to third-quarter real GDP growth increased from -0.15 percentage points to 0.07 percentage points after yesterday's Advance Economic Indicators release from the U.S. Census Bureau.

This was partly offset by a decline in the forecast of the contribution of inventory investment to third-quarter real GDP growth from 0.23 percentage points to 0.03 percentage points after the Census Bureau's Advance Economic Indicators release and its advance durable manufacturing report this morning.

In one day, the estimate jumps from 2.1% to 2.9%. In less than two weeks, it jumped from 2.0% to 2.9%.

• 2.9 - 2.0 = 0.9
• 0.9/2.0 = 0.45

So, in less than two weeks, using pretty much the same numbers, the Obama number jumps 45% from the Federal Reserve Bank's number in Atlanta, GA.

In one day, it jumped 38%. The bureaucrat who figured that out is due for a huge end-of-the-year bonus. 

Probably just one of those things.

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Comey

Updates

November 2, 2016: "intent to obstruct"? Huma had four e-mail accounts. 

Abedin was questioned by FBI agents and Justice Department officials, including those involved with counterintelligence matters, on April 5, 2016.

During those discussions, Abedin revealed that she used four different email accounts while she was deputy chief of staff for operations in Clinton’s seventh floor office at the State Department.

The email accounts included her official State Department account, 1) abedinh@state.gov; 2) the private server account, huma@clintonemail.com; and, 3) her private email, humamabedin@yahoo.com. Abedin’s fourth email account was associated with the campaign activities of her estranged husband, former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner. 

Later, 2:53 p.m. Central Time: when one reads The New York Times story on the relationship among Huma Abedin, Anthony Weiner, and Hillary (which was posted about 7 minutes ago) the writer comes incredibly close to using the French phrase ménage à trois. Early in the series, House of Cards, there was a ménage à trois among husband and wife (protagonists of the show) and a Secret Service agent. It is well know that the writers of this Netflix series got their inspiration from the Clintons (if that's the correct idiom). When asked about the content of the show, whether it was credible, sometimes seeming to have gone too far out on a limb, the writers have been known to answer that if they wrote what they really knew was going on in Washington, no one would "believe" the show.

Later, 2:37 p.m. Central Time: this is the headline over at The Los Angeles Times -- "FBI says e-mails found in Anthony Weiner's sexting scandal may have links to Clinton probe." Okay, for those who are under the Geico Rock, let's review: Hillary Clinton has been under suspicion, like, forever. She was the target of an FBI investigation, for, perhaps a year. Her closest aide, confidant, friend, and vice chairman of Clinton's presidential campaign was Huma Abedin. Huma is married to, now separated from, Mr Weiner. And now, two weeks before the election, the FBI tells us they found e-mails in Weiner's sexting scandal that may have links to the Clinton probe. What in the world was the FBI doing for a full year investigating Ms Clinton's e-mails and private servers? Apparently not looking at e-mail from her closest aide, confidant, and friend -- or not looking very closely.

Later, 1:03 p.m. Central Time: literally less than an hour after I wrote the original post below, I went to Drudge; he had posted a number of new banner headlines. Most surprising was a link to one of Clinton's press agents: The New Yorker. The last two paragraphs of the article by Jane Mayer, a New Yorker staff writer since 1995:

In a letter to F.B.I. employees sent soon after the letter to Congress, Comey tried to explain his unusual decisions. In the letter, which was obtained by the Washington Post, he acknowledged, “Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed. I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record. At the same time, however, given that we don’t know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails, I don’t want to create a misleading impression. In trying to strike that balance, in a brief letter and in the middle of an election season,” he noted, “there is significant risk of being misunderstood.”

“I don’t really blame Comey,” another former Justice Department official said. “But it’s troubling.”

This official thought that Comey “didn’t want to look tainted. This new information comes to him, and he’s afraid if he doesn’t make it public until after the election he’ll be impeached. People will say he lied to Congress. But in the end he did the self-protective thing. Was it the right thing? Put it this way: it isn’t what previous Administrations have done.”

Many, many comments could be made on those two paragraphs. Most troubling is a journalist who feels that "cover-ups of past administrations" justify "cover-ups by the present administration." At least that's how I read her last three sentences.

"Didn't want to look tainted." "Didn't want to be indicted for conspiracy" is how I read it. Another way to read this: "Do I really want to be the first FBI Director to go to prison for conspiracy?"

My hunch: an in-house FBI lawyer went to Comey and said: "We either tell Congress ourselves that the Weiner investigation has led us back to Ms Clinton, or we wait for someone to leak that fact. Or it comes out after the election and we now find ourselves defending an obstruction of justice suit." At least that's my hunch. Which may change as more facts come out.

The Bernstein hunch: if what the FBI found among Weiner's and Huma's e-mail was simply "more of the same" with regard to Ms Clinton, Comey would not have sent the letter that he did to Congress. The investigation of Mr Weiner and Ms Abedin would have continued but no need to "go back" to Ms Clinton; that ground had already been plowed during a 3 1/2 hour interview. Bernstein: there must have been a "bombshell" in Mr Weiner's or Huma's e-mail exchanges. 

Original Post

My hunch: evidence of conspiracy to obstruct justice. That's pretty much a given. The "fun" is listening to the talk at the deli about who were involved in the conspiracy. The list of "usual suspects" is quite long.