Concealing the coming crash

Major Australian papers ran an article yesterday on veteran fund manager Han K. Lee (who predicted the GFC and had his fund ready) who is again predicting another crash soon.  We’ve posted The Age’s version but AFR’s is better if you have access – either is a must read.  Lee is reinforcing much of what we talk about daily, but one thing he mentions that few dare to is the obvious data manipulation by Governments.  Eg – last week shares rallied strongly and gold came down on the ‘awesome’ US employment data showing about 280,000 new jobs and the unemployment rate down to 6.1%.  Zero Hedge published the graph below illustrating simply that the 280,000 was made up entirely of part time jobs and in fact full time jobs FELL by 523,000.  The published (U3) 6.1% unemployment rate was helped by 92,000 people giving up looking and if including them the US Government’s own official U6 number is 12.1%.  The US has a 35 year low participation rate of only 62.8%.