Although small towns like Whitewater are supposed to be places of
clear thinking and straight talk, in a small town like Whitewater, bureaucrats will flack any aparently positive data over the actual conditions of life in town. It’s how simple-minded cheerleading has replaced honesty and integrity as the lingua franca of Whitewater.
Consider, for example, how the city manager of Whitewater touted, and an incumbent politician and online publisher scurried to republish, a Moody’s bond rating as proof of the city’s supposed economic strength and fiscal management. The value of the bond rating was predictably exaggerated, and deceptively presented. It wasn’t hard to critique and to place in an honest, realistic perspective.
See, On Whitewater, Wisconsin’s Recent Bond Rating.
An even more egregious example of city manager Brunner’s sophistry was his flacking of a study that referred to Whitewater (population 14,000) as a dreamtown, when the actual subejct of the survey was the entire county (Walworth County, with more than
one-hundred thousand people)!
Brunner’s a man banking on people reading only what he writes, and delving no deeper than his often erroneous and superficial analysis.
See, Municipal Exaggeration: Dream Towns.
When I write about conditions in Whitewater, or America, I refer to actual conditions that affect people’s lives, like unemployment and child poverty, both high in our area.
When pushing a bond rating over the truth of conditions in town, Brunner is like a man who confuses the outward depiction of someone with that person’s actual health:
It’s wrong to allow the superficial to distract us from actual conditions, commonly lived.
The strength or weakness of an economy is measured in how conditions fare for common people, not a lucky few, and certainly not for taxpayer-supported, big-talking bureacrats. It’s even worse when officials flack false claims, like conflating the city with the entire county.
The latest gross domestic product numbers are out, and the preliminary figures show seemingly impressive growth of 5.7% in the fourth quarter. I’m surprised that I have not heard the crack economic team at our municipal building contend that 99% of all national growth took place in Whitewater, in response to the visionary planning that the city manager offers Whitewater. Perhaps I just missed those remarks in the latest Whitewater Weekly Report.
In fact, the 5.7 number isn’t so impressive, when one considers that most of it amounted only to replacing depleted inventories.
Here’s a more careful assessment:
….over 60% (3.7%) of the growth came from inventory rebuilding, as opposed to just 0.7% in the third quarter. If you examine the numbers, you find that inventories had dropped below
sales, so a buildup was needed.Increasing inventories add to GDP, while, counterintuitively, sales from inventory decrease GDP. Businesses are just adjusting to the New Normal level of sales. I expect further inventory build-up in the next two quarters, although not at this level, and then we level off the latter half of the year.
While rebuilding inventories is a very good thing, that growth will only continue if sales grow. Otherwise inventories will find the level of the New Normal and stop growing. And if you look at consumer spending in the data, you find that it actually declined in the 4th quarter, both annually and from the previous quarter. “Domestic demand” declined from 2.3% in the third quarter to only 1.7% in the fourth quarter. Part of that is clearly the absence of “Cash for Clunkers,” but even so that is not a sign of economic strength.
See, We are So Screwed from the Business Insider. (The title’s less impressive than the analysis, an analysis that is more serious and detailed.)
There’s company in the view that the worst is not over, from economists Nouriel Roubini of NYU and Lawrence Summers, now a White House economic advisor:
The headline number will look large and big, but actually when you dissect it, it’s “very dismal and poor,” Roubini said in a Jan. 30 Bloomberg Television interview following a U.S. Commerce Department report that showed economic expansion of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter. “I think we are in trouble.”
Roubini said more than half of the growth was related to a replenishing of depleted inventories and that consumption was reliant on monetary and fiscal stimulus. As these forces ebb, the rate will slow to 1.5 percent in the second half of 2010.
Roubini, who chairs New York-based Roubini Global Economics LLC, has become famous for his pessimistic projections. In 2007, he correctly predicted a “hard landing” for the world economy. He said last year that the global recession would shrink through 2009, only for growth to resume in the middle of the year.
“Feel Like Recession”
He says now that while the world’s largest economy won’t relapse into recession, U.S. unemployment will rise from the current 10 percent amid “mediocre” growth.
“It’s going to feel like a recession even if technically we’re not going to be in a recession,” he said in the interview. Also speaking in Davos, Summers, director of the White House National Economic
Council, said that the statistical recovery won’t mask a “human recession.”
See, Roubini Sees Very Dismal and Poor Expansion
There’s a path to good and substantial growth for Whitewater, and an economy that lifts children and families out of chronic poverty. That way requires reform, and the simple rejection of puffery and cheerleading. A significant reduction in the size of the city of Whitewater’s budget, with a meaningful decrease in the tax levy, the easing of crippling regulations, the end of wasteful multi-million dollar schemes that feed on taxpayer money and public debt, and honesty instead of dishonest cheerleading would uplift our community.
When we embrace, in the words of a great organization, “individual liberty, limited government, [and] free markets” our city will find lasting prosperity. We’ll find even more: an end to dishonest and selfish leadership.