The fig leaf offered by HousingWire  senior financial writer, Trey Garrison, is that both political parties have done the same thing; namely, use their influence to cause a false or misleading report to be issued by an agency of the federal government. In this case, Garrion’s pointing the finger squarely at the U.S. Census Bureau, but burnishes the broader point by asserting that the Affordable Care Act and employment figures are among the pattern of  “fudged numbers.”

Asserts Garrison, “…I’m seeing a pattern. Not one, two, trend – a real honest-to-Odin pattern. Five of the last five months we’ve had headlines of “New home sales beat expectations!” only to have dramatic, but quiet, downward revisions buried beneath the “New home sales beat expectations again!” headline the following month.”

Garrison states his case on this alleged pattern of deception by saying, “It’s almost like they’re trying to make the economy look like its doing better than it is.” adding, “That happened in June 2014: The economy added 288,000 jobs in June because part-time jobs grew by 799,000, while full-time jobs fell by 523,000.”

On the Census Bureau point, the financial writer shows a chart from ZeroHedge – shown below – to graphically illistruate the pattern he describes.  

Revised numbers in red, original Census Burea report numbers in blue.

But he plows ahead, saying the media is also responsible, because various media outlets can be as partisan as the political parties; abdicating their role of “watchdog” in favor of the role of compliant “lapdog.”

“You wonder why there’s no trust in government when even the Census Bureau is playing Team Red/Team Blue games,” quipped Garrison. ##

(Photo credit: HousingWire. Graphic: ZeroHedge)