How is the Economy in Reality (as opposed to Government statistics)

This is a pretty sobering article. Some highlights:

Secretary Paulson brings back the ghosts of Herbert Hoover: ‘The US banking system is sound…’

In an eerie echo of President Herbert Hoover in 1930, during a Presidential campaign against Roosevelt, following the stock market crash and collapse of numerous smaller banks, Paulson recently appeared on national TV to declare "our banking system is a safe and sound one."

Government manipulation of economic data:

The economic reality is not reflected in official US Commerce Department or Labor Department statistics. There the data is constantly being "revised" to hide the grim reality in an election year.

My good friend, economist John Williams of California, has meticulously tracked such "data revisions" for more than 25 years and found the manipulation of reality so alarming that he founded an independent subscriber service titled "Shadow Government Statistics" (http://www.shadowstats.com/ ), where he makes best estimate calculations of the reality not the official mythology.

Williams estimates the "real" unemployment rate (as opposed to the imaginary figures put out by the government) at 13.7%. Yeah, it's ugly.