Peter Wallace: Gov't's 7.3% GDP growth claim only 4.8% in reality

Read the whole thing. And Peter Wallace is no anti-GMA pundit. Money quote:

So because we had less imports, GDP looked good. From where I sit, that does not indicate a strong, growing economy, the best in 31 years. It indicates one where there’s probably a lot of skullduggery going on, and I’d better find out what it is—and fix it.

and this one:

We should be seeing better results by now. Instead, more people are poor today, and more people don’t have jobs than was the case in 2000. Percentages fool you, percentages are irrelevant when you talk people. In 2000 there were 11.2 percent unemployed according to government statistics. In 2006 there were only 7 percent—but they changed the definition. Using the old definition (only available up to 2006) there’s been no improvement, its still 11 percent. But there were 7.7 million more people eligible for work, so the 11.2 percent in 2000 was 3.5 million people and the 11 percent in 2006 was 4.1 million people. That’s 600,000 more people and that doesn’t even include the eight million who reluctantly deserted their families and fled overseas seeking a job that wasn’t available here. But it does include lowly paid, even unpaid, agricultural workers working on the family farm. I don’t consider that satisfactory employment.