Never Mind Journalism
The Financial Times, British I think, says in a current headline on Drudge: "China to Overtake US as Largest Manufacturer." Which was news to me as I thought that China had done that years ago, in volume at least if not actual dollar value (I used to work in the toy industry). As anyone that watched the Olympics opening ceremony might have figured out the one thing that China beats everyone in is volume.
This 'news' is based on the 'opinion' of the economic consultancy firm Global Insight, and is a bit more nuanced than the headline would make it appear.
The fact that Global Insight's
value-added data are arrived at by subtracting “inputs” – such as purchases of materials, parts and services – from raw “gross output”
adds a certain amount of voodoo to its prediction and dovetails with the caveat in the last paragraph which reads:
If inflation adjustments are used to put the numbers in constant prices, the expected US position looks better, because its inflation over this period is predicted to be lower than China’s.
Better than what? They don't say. This kind of reporting reminds me of the Two Americas variety (thank you again John Edwards) as explained here, where:
"a 1.5% growth rate in Germany is described as blazing" and an "American rate below 2.75% is sluggish" or "Any [American] rate below 1% is a recession."
Googling around a bit for Global Insight's past performance doesn’t overly impress me either, especially as contained in this same article is the fact that:
As recently as last year, Global Insight economists predicted that the US would retain the top [manufacturing] position until 2013
So what we take away from the Financial Timeses self contradictory and meaningless article is that Global Insight had some kind of press release so it could get its name in the paper to try and drum up business and the Times needed filler that had the added benefit of belittling the US economy.
