Back in my days as a sportswriter covering the Pittsburgh Steelers, aspiring players in training camp who eventually got cut often were told the decision was a “numbers game.”
The implied message was that while they were skilled and competent, they played a position at which the team was overstocked and hence fell victim because one roster only can include so many defensive tackles, or running backs, or cornerbacks, or whatever.
The actual message was that in the meritocracy of professional football, if this player had been good enough, someone else would have been sent packing with the numbers game explanation. But the numbers game story helped take the sting out of being cut.
These days, the numbers game has become a favorite tool of the current Biden regime to manipulate, obfuscate and otherwise render virtually useless the periodic data dumps, particularly economic-related items.
Let’s look at some recent numbers.
3.2– The February 12-month total consumer price index inflation rate as a percentage increase.
3.5– The March CPI 12-month total rate announced Wednesday as a percentage, an unhappy increase in inflation rate.
422 – The number of points the Dow Jones Industrial Average tanked Wednesday in the wake of the CPI release.
2.1 — The Thursday Producer Price Index rate increase for the past 12 months as a percentage.
2.2 — The anticipated 12-month PPI increase.
6.3 — The actual increase in gasoline prices as a percentage.
Minus-3.6 – The “seasonally adjusted” decline in gasoline prices that helped produce the 2.1 reported figure, just under 2.2 expectations.
271.84 – The point increase in the NASDAQ Thursday, to an all-time high of 16,442.20, based on optimism over positive (if only due to statistical chicanery) inflation news.
13 – The percentage-point jump in electricity bills in January from California’s Pacific Gas And Electric.
12,000-plus – The value in dollars of pork stolen earlier this week from a truck parked at a suburban Philadelphia truck stop while the driver slept.
10,771 – Futures prices per ton for cocoa, a record high, recorded Thursday morning for the vital chocolate ingredient.
0 – The amount of faith you should put in government economic statistics.
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