Don't Like The Game? Change The Rules

Apparently taking heed of our warning that the salad days (for those who gorge themselves on the green shoots of adversity) of horrific year-on-year declines in economic statistics were coming to an end, Edward Hugh has come up with a plan - compare everything to the peak, forever. From his latest:

...I have also introduced a new measure - P2P - which stands here for "Peak to Present", since after 12 months of decline the year on year measure is no longer interesting, and more than often misleading.

This fatuous statistical sleight-of-hand, journalistically clever as it may be, is unsatisfactory on at least a couple of levels:

1). It implies that the economic activity generated during a credit, and coincident asset price, bubble of unusually large proportions is the measure against which recovery should be measured. Is his official position that the bubble was sustainable? Admitting, of course, that this ploy will allow him to presume that he is right for a good number of years - recovery will be slow - it strikes us as also being a good excuse for the immediate republishing of a 'NASDAQ is doomed forever' headline that one might have read in late 2002 and its continued appearance until the index hits 5132.52 points once again;

2). The tactic of quoting a non-standard (especially with regards to the time frame) data set when making an argument ensures that Mr. Hugh will never have to suffer the indignity of a peer group comparison - being equivalent to claiming victory at a debate conducted in Catalán in which he spoke in Sanskrit.

An interesting feature, by the way, of this latest advance in the clear-headed analysis of Spain's economy is its similarity to the gambit being employed by both governments and financial institutions, in countries throughout the world, to escape the current conundrum - drag the demise out over as long a time line as possible, and keep up the spin. In light of his recent insistence that the Spanish banks renounce their contrivances and confess their sins immediately, we have to ask:

Is what's good for the goose not for the gander?

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