Conspiracy theorists will love this.
Yesterday, Jan Hatzius, the chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs
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 the numbers may have
been leaked to Goldman, a company that is high up on the list of
Forbes “100
best companies to work for”?
Goldman’s 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.