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Ripple Effect

Lies, Damn Lies, and Government Statistics

Loading ...Addison Wiggin

July 30, 2025 • 48 second read


CPIgovernment statisticsstatistics

Lies, Damn Lies, and Government Statistics

Every day, millions of investors make decisions in part on economic data.

This morning, markets are digesting the news that GDP rose at a 3% annualized rate in the second quarter of 2025 – a sharp reversal from the negative read in the first quarter.

However, government statistics tend to get revised. Worse, today, an increasing amount of data that goes into those statistics isn’t even accurate – it’s an admitted guess:

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Government statistics are increasingly based on guesswork, not facts.

In this instance, CPI, which drives inflation, is usually based on the costs of about 90,000 goods across the economy. But with one-third of the data now based on an estimate — or worse, a guesstimate — it makes CPI data suspect.

This makes other measures, like PPI, suspect, making it impossible for the Fed to accurately determine inflation or its trend.

~ Addison

P.S.  As always, your reader feedback is welcome: feedback@greyswanfraternity.com (We read all emails. Thanks in advance for your contribution.)


The Useless Metal that Rules the World

August 29, 2025 • Dominic Frisby

Gold has led people to do the most brilliant, the most brave, the most inventive, the most innovative and the most terrible things. ‘More men have been knocked off balance by gold than by love,’ runs the saying, usually attributed to Benjamin Disraeli. Where gold is concerned, emotion, not logic, prevails. Even in today’s markets it is a speculative asset whose price is driven by greed and fear, not by fundamental production numbers.

The Useless Metal that Rules the World
The Regrettable Repetition

August 29, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

Fresh GDP data — the Commerce Department revised Q2 growth upward to 3.3% — fueling the rally. Investors cheered the “Goldilocks” read: strong enough to keep the music going, not hot enough (at least on paper) to derail hopes for a Fed pivot.

Even the oddball tickers joined in. Perhaps as fittingly as Lego, Build-A-Bear Workshop popped after beating earnings forecasts, on track for its fifth consecutive record year, thanks to digital expansion.

Neither represents a bellwether of industrial might — but in this market, even teddy bears roar.

The Regrettable Repetition
Gold’s Primary Trend Remains Intact

August 29, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

In modern finance theory, only U.S. T-bills are considered risk-free assets.

Central banks are telling us they believe the real risk-free asset is gold.

Our Grey Swan research shows exactly how the dynamic between government finance and gold is playing out in real time.

Gold’s Primary Trend Remains Intact
Socialist Economics 101

August 28, 2025 • Lau Vegys

When we compare apples to apples—median home prices to median household income, both annualized—we get a much more nuanced picture. Housing has indeed become less affordable, with the price-to-income ratio climbing from roughly 3.5 in 1984 to about 5.3 today. In other words, the typical American family now has to work much harder to afford the same home.

But notice something crucial: the steepest increases coincide precisely with periods of massive government intervention. The post-dot-com bubble recovery fueled by Fed easy money after 2001. The housing bubble inflated by government-backed mortgages and Fannie Mae shenanigans. The recent explosion driven by unprecedented monetary stimulus and COVID lockdown policies.

Socialist Economics 101