If Mark Twain were alive today, he'd probably say that there are "lies, damned lies, and inflation statistics."
There just aren't many more important numbers that so many depend on and that are so regularly and maliciously manipulated.
You see, wages, pensions, and Social Security are all dependent in some measure on the Consumer Price Index. It affects the income of some 80 million Americans through contracts or indexation.
In his recent State of the Union Address, President Obama unveiled something new: a retirement savings account to "help" Americans build a nest egg, coining it the "MyRA."
Something immediately felt wrong about the proposal... but I couldn't put my finger on it.
So I researched the new MyRA and found details to help you understand just how it works.
But I also saw some potential dangers there that you need to prepare for now...
On August 2, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will report the official unemployment rate. But this number doesn't tell the accurate story of the jobs picture here in the United States.
That's usually the case with government-produced economic indicators. Whatever the government figure will say, it will not truly reflect reality. Simply put, it's a rigged number.
When it comes to cheating the numbers, nobody does it better than Uncle Sam.
U.S. investors rely on accurate government data in order to make investment decisions in various sectors of the economy.
But what if these figures reflected negative headlines on a near-constant basis? It wouldn't instill much confidence. And it certainly would cost a lot of people in Washington their jobs.
That's why Uncle Sam plays games with the numbers and presents a far rosier picture of the world to low-information voters and investors. But we're paying attention here at Money Morning, and that's why we're holding a spotlight on the fuzzy math in Washington.
Counting down, here are the four most rigged government statistics in America today:
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