MEET JOHN WILLIAMS

Walter J. "John" Williams was born in 1949. He received an A.B. in Economics, cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 1971, and was awarded a M.B.A. from Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Business Administration in 1972, where he was named an Edward Tuck Scholar. During his career as a consulting economist, John has worked with individuals as well as Fortune 500 companies.

Formally known as Walter J. Williams, my friends call me John. For more than 25 years, I have been a private consulting economist and, out of necessity, had to become a specialist in government economic reporting.

One of my early clients was a large manufacturer of commercial airplanes, who had developed an econometric model for predicting revenue passenger miles. The level of revenue passenger miles was their primary sales forecasting tool, and the model was heavily dependent on the GNP (now GDP) as reported by the Department of Commerce. Suddenly, their model stopped working, and they asked me if I could fix it. I realized the GNP numbers were faulty, corrected them for my client (official reporting was similarly revised a couple of years later) and the model worked again, at least for a while, until GNP methodological changes eventually made the underlying data worthless.

That began a lengthy process of exploring the history and nature of economic reporting and in interviewing key people involved in the process from the early days of government reporting through the present. For a number of years I conducted surveys among business economists as to the quality of government statistics (the vast majority thought it was pretty bad), and my results led to front page stories in the New York Times and Investors Business Daily, considerable coverage in the broadcast media and a joint meeting with representatives of all the government's statistical agencies. Despite minor changes to the system, government reporting has deteriorated sharply in the last decade or so. --

John Williams

So here we are, trying to make sense out of what is going on around us and we can't get any good information. Kinda leaves us in a hole. What do we do t live and survive? We don't want to become slave to FEMA or anything like that so we try to avoid any missteps that would lead us astray of the proper path. And we are getting screwed by those we elected to watch for us. They recently had 7 or 8 CEO's of big New York banks in to testify before congress. And every elected investigator on the committee had accepted campaign finance money from one of more of the banks concerned. I mean, my God, give me a fucking break. How do my interests get looked out for if the lookers are in the pay of the very folks who have made things so bad for everyone. One of the big things I have discovered in my study of this mess is that all the bail-out money the banks have received is being hoarded awaiting the time it can be used to buy expensive assets very cheaply. Of course the question still remains, how the hell are we to know? Everyone involved is lying out their ass. The banks, the congress. the administration, the media. You name it, they are lying!

I am still a bit pissed off about the fact that the whole country was bombarded with the admonition that the stimulus bill HAD TO GET PASSED QUICKLY! My God get it passed. Late hour talkathons and negotiations. Elaborate conniving to get the process speeded up. Hurry up and piss, the worlds on fire! And Obama ain't even gonna sign it until Tuesday this week. No one has even read the damn thing nor knows what is in it. Are things being added this weekend to be inserted into the bill before Obama signs it? Beats the hell outta me! We are just poor preppers and homesteaders trying to make it and the bastards won't even tell us the truth of what is going on.. Kinda lame if you ask me!

The plot is getting thicker and the deals in the back rooms are getting more potent. The gang in D.C. is setting up their rulership to the max and we are going to be expected to follow their dictates. I ain't aiming to do it. I aim to try to feed a lot of people and to protect my wife and friends. Ain't got a whole hell of a lot more than that on my agenda. It's really quite a full plate. We have a jump on most people but we have been trying to warn others for a long time. Radio and the Internet are alive with the message. If you wanted to hear it you could. I hope you have gotten out of town and out into the countryside. I hope you have easy access to drinking water and you get in a large garden. I hope you have some good friends with you and that you all have some fine guns and ammo. A nice food stash would be a blessing also. A good medical kit never hurt anyone. Stay alive!

Michael

mboone@rtccom.net