Conspiracy theorists will love this.  Yesterday, Jan Hatzius, the chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs (GS) revised his forecast of job losses from 300,000 to 250,000.

The prediction was very accurate.  Today, we learned that the number turned out to be 247,000.

Is it golden analysis or does Goldman somehow own the government, as many have recently suggested?

Consider the words of Gary Aguirre, a former government official with the Securities and Exchange Commission:

The system maintains itself, because those that stay know their turn will come if they play the game. They see a director or associate director move onto a $2 million job with a Wall Street law firm. Then, the departed employee calls back to his former colleagues and says, “you know I really don’t think there is much of a case against so-and-so, I’d like for you to take a look at it.” And the case goes away; the system goes on in perpetuity … [There's a] culture of ‘don’t rock the boat,’ the industry does not want ‘boy scouts,’ and if you can be effective with the SEC through your contacts, that is a very valuable asset you can bring to the table.

Aguirre accused SEC lawyers and others of protecting and working with hedge funds to position themselves for future lucrative jobs.  That accusation came well before the Bernie Madoff revelation.  Can a similar partnership be happening with Goldman Sachs and other government officials – perhaps with the government agency who provides these numbers?

How much does an economic assistant make at the Bureau of Labor Statistics?

$15.00 an hour, according to a government jobs listing.  An economist makes “$31,751.00+”, according to the same site.  We would have to assume that the plus in “$31,751.00+” is not an infinite number.

So is it far-fetched to consider that some numbers may have been leaked to Goldman, a company that is high up on the list of Forbes “100 best companies to work for”?

We should note that Goldman’s Jan Hatzius also predicted the unemployment rate would rise to 9.7%, though it actually fell to 9.4%.  Perhaps they are very long the market and were setting up for a rise.  So would say the conspiracy theorist.