horse of george

It was striking to hear the other night, while watching CNBC, three 'experts' - market analysts, investment gurus, whatever - all agree on something that I've been complaining about [without the slightest hint of expertness] for years - to wit, why do people accept China's numbers on GDP without question? When China declares its spending on defense it's just accepted wisdom in the foreign policy community to assume they're lying and then multiply the number by a factor of three of four or whatever - and yet when China releases economic data there seems to be a naive willingness to accept these figures as above board - I've never understood why that is - at the very least we know the number is juiced by excessive gov't investment and so even if the numbers are accurate they're still misleading - so it was nice to hear supposed experts confirm that I'm not crazy for thinking that - one of them made the point that GDP always mirrors electricity usage and if you were to guess China's real GDP based on electricity usage it's not 8%, it's more in the neighbourhood of 3%. It's probably inappropriate that, if his claim is true, I take pleasure in it.