U.S. Economic Growth Slows to 1.8% Rate in First Quarter
April 28, 2011
Man demonstrates where economic forecasts belong
In a stunning news release it was revealed that the American economy slowed to a crawl in the first quarter. For no demonstrable reason economists are hopeful the huge setback will be only temporary.
Total output grew at an annual pace of 1.8 percent last quarter, the Commerce Department said Thursday, after having expanded at an annualized rate of 3.1 percent at the end of 2010. Most economists had forecast growth of 2 percent in the first quarter, based on herd mentality.
The shocking disparity of two tenths of one percent sent many economists reeling, with some retreating to their back offices to try to recalculate the numbers or recalibrate their computer programs to push the rate down to the Commerce department's 1.8 percent. At least one Wall Street economic forecaster leaped to her death from the window of her 40th floor office when the news was announced. Her own personal forecast had been for 2.1 percent, effectively ending her forecasting career, according to sources unfamiliar with the woman or the economy. "You just don't make a 3/10ths of one percent mistake and live to tell about it in this profession," said one veteran forecaster, whose own forecast, 2.0 percent, was squarely in line with the herd forecast, thus preserving his own overpaid job.
The female forecaster, whose identity was being withheld while company officials searched for her name in company personnel files, was said to have been distraught for several weeks at the prospect of losing her overpaid, $375,000 a year sinecure for doing essentially nothing other than running a computer program invented by someone else and bought and paid for by her employer. But she did hold a Ph.D. from Yale.
She had misplaced a decimal point whilst copying numbers from a computer print out, leading to an overstatement of more than $5 billion in net profits for her employer in the fourth quarter of 2010.
"She already was toast over the decimal point," said one of her colleagues and best friend, who is slated to move up to her vacant position now that she has offed herself. "Bad forecast for her, good job opportunity for me," said her former friend.
The economic slowdown was largely attributable to Donald Trump's off-the-wall claims that President Barrack Obama is not the legitimate president of the U.S., leading to a loss of confidence in U.S. manufactured products and a resulting widening trade deficit, due to foreign governments' loss of confidence in America and in federal government spending and higher commodity prices, which reduced the amount of pocket money that households and businesses had available to spend, even though none of the above made any sense whatsoever.
A veteran Wall Street investment banker, who now is an alcoholic living on skid row in the Bowery, said "there was no telling what the hell was going on anywhere by anyone and that the forecasts were little more than a crap shoot, using real crap," i.e. human feces. He said all economic forecasts belonged in the crapper.
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