Review of Gene Epstein, Econospinningby
Morgan Reynolds
"Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper." ~ George Orwell Economists are familiar with the cliché "lies, damned lies and statistics," which puts statistics at the top of the pyramid of lies. ESPN sports radio personality Colin Cowherd, on the other hand, insists, "People lie, the numbers don't." Since people create the numbers the line between liars and bad numbers may be less than bright and clear, but Gene Epstein – economics columnist for Barron's magazine and author of Econospinning – essentially sides with Cowherd. Epstein finds little fault with government's economic numbers and plenty of fault with the reporters and pundits who use those numbers.
Epstein defines "econospinning" as the "sort of economic journalism that shapes data around a predetermined story rather than the story around the discoverable data." It is all familiar enough, now isn't it? Rather than asking "What happened?," too many observers push their own agenda, fixing the intelligence around the policy as the Downing Street memo on Bush's Iraq invasion put it. January 26, 2008 Morgan Reynolds, Ph.D. [send him mail], is professor emeritus at Texas A&M University and former director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis headquartered in Dallas, TX. He served as chief economist for the US Department of Labor during 2001–2, George W. Bush's first term. Visit his new website. Copyright © 2008 Mises Institute |
Perhaps
surprisingly for a pro-market, anti-statist economist, I agree with
Epstein's assessment. Most of the numbers, especially the labor
data produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics upon which Epstein
concentrates, are tolerably reliable and accurate, provided the
user takes the time to learn their limitations. In 2001–2,
I was chief economist at the labor department, a Bush-Cheney political
appointee of all things, and was quickly impressed with the thoroughness
and professionalism of BLS personnel and their numerical output.