You can't believe anything Washington says

http://tinyurl.com/yjsmajy
Mean Street: A Sham GDP for a Sham Economy
Americans rejoice! GDP grew by 3.5% in the third quarter and the recession is over.
... don’t ask yourself why the recession has ended. ...The recession is over only because Washington decided it should be. With billions in fresh government spending, it was only a matter of time before GDP posted some growth. It’s too bad all that government spending is borrowed money. Someday, we’ll actually have to pay off this year’s $1.4 trillion deficit...it’s hard not to see today’s GDP bounce as a bit of a sham....Almost half — or 1.7% of the pickup in GDP growth came from “motor vehicle output.” That’s the summer’s $3 billion cash-for-clunkers program doing its thing. But at what cost?...Apparently, it cost the U.S. taxpayer about $24,000 per vehicle sold. Edmunds gets that number by dividing the $3 billion by the 125,000 additional car sales generated by the program. T...possible that the Edmunds.com analysis is actually understating the true costs to the taxpayer? What about the interest costs on the borrowed $3 billion? What about the cost of propping up GMAC so that it could underwrite cash-for-clunker loans?...the $8,000 credit for first-time home buyers. For the third quarter, “real residential fixed investment” — also known as “homebuilding” — jumped 23.4%. That boosted GDP by another 0.5%....not seeing the real cost of the homebuyer tax credit. This is very expensive stuff. The Calculated Risk blog figures the home-buyer credit costs the taxpayer $43,000 per incremental home sale. Goldman Sachs ran its own numbers, reckoning that each incremental home sale cost the taxpayer an astounding $80,000. ...understates the program’s true costs. We don’t include the cost of all the fraud — even though we know thousands of false and improper claims are being filed. We don’t consider the cost of propping up the FHA, which is now underwriting all of the mortgages. And we can never calculate the true economic cost of messing with home prices – though the crisis over the last three years certainly gives us a hint....