- Introducing The Reality Index…
- The truth about GDP “growth” since 2019…
- Time is short. Why should Wall Street always get the best deals first? Institutions move first. Retail investors hear about it later .This may be a rare chance to act before the crowd piles in. Explore a backdoor ‘SpaceX’ opportunity before it’s too late.
Dear Reader,
I have long contended that statistics conceal more than they reveal… that they are lovely liars… and that they are weapons of mass distortion in the improper hands — government hands in particular.
Freedom Financial News contributor Jeffrey Tucker has authored a fresh article in validation thereof.
He cites hard evidence that torturers of statistical data have mangled the true gross domestic product since the pandemic.
A delirious bedlam of monetary creation has distorted the true economic picture out of all semblance.
Mr. Tucker:
- Many of us have had the intuition that the economic damage from 2020 — including industrial stoppages, monetary printing, supply-chain disruptions, extended school closures, and general population demoralization — was in fact far greater than official statistics indicate.
- What follows will shore up this intuition, using new techniques and numbers from an innovative project called RealityIndex.co.
The Reality Index
The Reality Index, so-called, is an artificial intelligence gadget constructed to penetrate the obfuscating statistical fogs… and direct a brilliant spotlight upon truth.
Official statistics suggest steady economic growth since 2019.
AI Overview — a dependable regurgitator of official data, for example — reports 14%-15% cumulative economic growth since 2019.
Yet what has the Reality Index revealed about the gross domestic product across the same space?
Here are your options:
A): The gross domestic product has merely expanded 4.2% since 2019.
B): The gross domestic product has not expanded at all since 2019 — the economy has stood in place since 2019.
C): The gross domestic product has in fact contracted between 1.8% and 4.2% since 2019.
D): The gross domestic product has in fact contracted between 5% and 12% since 2019.
Have you selected your option? You will have your answer shortly.
Statistical Wizardry
Let us first expose the statistical wizardry that conjures into existence consistent economic expansion.
Mr. Tucker:
- Housing prices are not measured directly but rather converted to owners’ equivalent rent (OER). Medical service prices are adjusted for consumption, not premiums or final bills. When consumers substitute one good for another, that is also factored in.
- When the quality of a good or service improves, the statisticians apply what they called hedonic adjustments, which are invariably designed to minimize price increases and never run the other direction.
- The core of the problem is a constantly changing methodology in official data. The formula was changed eight times over 35 years. All the changes seem technical and vaguely justifiable, once explained.
- Adding them all up, you get wild distortions in the data that the index is supposed to reveal. All these changes came home to roost in the great inflation of 2021-2024, which might be entering a second wave right now.
Did you catch that? The torturers of statistical data have altered their standards eight times across 35 years.
Thus that which once measured 12 inches subsequently measures nine inches… four inches… or is it 16 inches… or 19 inches?
The answer reduces to the shifting and variable fancies of the data manglers.
How then can you trust their figures? Here is the shortened answer:
You cannot.
Here is the lengthened answer:
You cannot.
The Government Consistently Underreports Inflation
Thus we learn that:
- What happens when we strip all this away and examine actual prices as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, without all the many adjustments? We find that a basket of goods and services that cost $100 in 1980 costs $515 per the Reality Index in 2025. The official CPI reports only $391.
- That means that real prices have run 32% higher over 45 years than the government reports. Over a 55-year window, the Reality Index ran 54.4% faster than CPI.
- To put it another way, consider the loss of purchasing power since 1980. According to the CPI, the loss has been to make $1 in 1980 worth only 26 cents. According to the Reality Index, the loss is greater: $1 in 1980 is now worth only 19 cents. By any standard, that is a shocking devaluation.
A shocking devaluation indeed. Let us then revisit our question.
What has the Reality Index revealed about the gross domestic product since 2019?
Here, again, are your options:
A): The gross domestic product has merely expanded 4.2% since 2019.
B): The gross domestic product has not expanded at all since 2019 — the economy has stood in place since 2019.
C): The gross domestic product has in fact contracted between 1.8% and 4.2% since 2019.
D): The gross domestic product has in fact contracted between 5% and 12% since 2019.
Recall, official statistics report 14%-15% cumulative expansion since 2019.
Recession Without End
The Reality Index reveals the answer. That answer is D — the gross domestic product has in fact contracted between 5% and 12% since 2019.
Mr. Tucker:
- The official definition of recession is two quarters of declining real GDP. In revised data, we’ve had consistently negative GDP in all but three quarters since summer of 2022. In those three quarters, output barely rose above zero. Mostly real GDP has been falling, a recession without end.
- Overall, Grok AI estimates a loss of 5-12% of GDP from 2019 to present using Reality Index numbers. Sorry but read that again. Instead of any recovery, we’ve seen as much as double-digit declines in GDP overall since 2020. This is the cumulative loss spread out over six years.
Yet the deception slipped beneath public awareness. More:
- The lockdowns were… a massive exogenous shock to commerce, accompanied by a huge devaluation of the currency. It amounted to a gigantic transfer of wealth to elites, the largest in history, followed by a destruction of wealth of the middle and lower classes…
- We have heard nothing for six years except happy talk about economic recovery. Based on real data, the opposite has happened, most tracing to the disastrous lockdowns of 2020…
- The reality could be that we’ve lost as much as 12% of national output since the lockdown era, along with a halving of the currency value.
A 12% reduction to the national output is plenty handsome. Extended across multiple years and you have a crisis upon your hands — though its reduced speed conceals its scale.
Thus I encourage you to disregard official economic statistics. They are sources not of light but of fog.
I encourage you instead to “get real” though The Reality Index.
Regards,
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
