It seems the International Energy Agency has been fudging its world oil production figures according to a ‘shocking’ article published by the Guardian UK:

Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower

Terry Macalister 
guardian.co.uk, Monday 9 November 2009 21.30 GMT

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation’s latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies.

Perhaps Peak Oil actually took place sometime in the past; the peak of physical oil production, that is. Peak oil measured in dollars- per- barrel took place in the end of 1998. Perhaps the beginning of the decline in production from existing oil fields actually took place around that time rather than six years later as suggested by Matt Simmons. 

Simmons claim is derived from the same statistics at issue here. It is likely the Energy Information Agency’s figures are also ‘fudged’. Better to let the market provide the real data; the participants follow their analysis with hard cash, not the case with the watchdogs.

There are inaccurate statistics released constantly. Here is an analysis of employment figures from Automatic Earth:

Ilargi: I’d like to take another look at Sunday’s post, The Jobs Doom Loop , which addressed two separate sets of (un-)employment numbers emerging from the US administration.

First, there is the issue of the jobs allegedly saved/created by the $787 billion stimulus plan, which turn out to be highly questionable and in all likelihood wildly exaggerated to make the current White House look good/better. Giving someone a pay raise is not the same as creating a job, guys. And saving jobs that are not threatened doesn’t count either.

Second, in what goes way beyond the current White House, but is happily embraced regardless, the reporting of monthly and yearly job losses by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For October, 192,000 lost jobs were reported, but only after 86,000 were added just about entirely arbitrarily through the moot-in-a-recession birth/death model. If we disregard the birth/death model, October saw 25,000 MORE job losses (a total of 278,000) than September. Still, the media widely reported LESS losses.

Note that the figure of 192,000 lost jobs was arrived at through the Payroll (or Establishment) Survey, while the alternative method reported by the BLS, the Household Survey, indicates that October saw 558,000 newly unemployed. While the Payroll Survey consults more firms than the Household Survey consults households, John Williams insists the latter is a far more scientific method. And it has a much wider range:

“Where the household survey includes farm workers, the self-employed and workers in private homes, the payroll survey does not.”.

Welcome to the land of endless Rosey Scenarii. Follow the lead of the establishment and all is well! Particularly now that the banking industry has received some (massive) money transfusions. 

Here’s Sheila Bair:

Everybody lies! The credibility gap itself is the danger. Commerce and markets rely on trust, the pitch that bad news is trivial and short- lived undermines trust. The fact of the endless lies speaks more eloquently to the dangers that each lie intends to assuage.

Our current situation must be faced with ruthless honesty … and it is not.  The non- stop rationalization is the truth will destroy the markets. This is also a lie. The confidence in markets is justified: if only the establishment would show some confidence in them! 

Our Potemkin stock market bubbles are lies, pumped up by central bank lending infusions to allow finance to swap its derivatives for cash. What kind of confidence in stocks does this activity generate? The intent is to show an active marketplace pricing a new run of business success, while a quick look behind the facade shows the rats fleeing a sinking ship, grabbing everything that isn’t nailed down. 

The situation is that we have created for ourselves over the past fifty years a profound mess. Instead of facing future constraints honestly and taking the necessary steps to provide for long- term sustainability, pleasure and equilibrium with nature, the future has been looted. After the emergence of last year’s ‘crisis of the moment’, the looting accelerated blessed by the establishment. The public has supported ‘conservatives’ who cannot bring themselves to actually conserve. The consequence is the breakdown of the entire system.

Ilargi continues with unemployment quoting John Mauldin:

My favorite slicer and dicer of data, Greg Weldon, offers up an even more horrific number. As I have noted before, if you have not looked for work in the last four weeks, the BLS does not count you as unemployed. Quoting Greg:

“Moreover, when we combine the monthly change in the number of Unemployed, with the number Not in the Labor Force, we might consider the result to be a proxy for the actual ‘change’ in the underlying labor market situation … in which case, October’s figure of 817,000 represents the fourth LARGEST yet, behind last month’s (September’s) second largest figure of 1,021,000

… for a two-month combined figure of 1.838 million , in newly Unemployed, or no longer ‘in’ the Labor Force …

When the tally is made the real unemployment rate stands @ the Great Depression- level of 22%. The difference between this figure and the ‘official’ Bureau of Labor Statistics number is simply wished out of existence.

The effect of this level of unemployment on commerce cannot be so easily wished away.

This fudging is not anything new. Employment has been the resource most likely to be cut for businesses seeking to improve profitability since the 1980’s. The end product of mergers and business acquisitions was always the reductions in workforce taking place shortly after nuptials. This was done in the name of ‘efficiency’; the jobs were done in, that is. There was the shipping of US jobs overseas to China and the importation of cheap, Mexican labor to perform the tasks unsuited to outsourcing. Nevertheless, the government proclaimed during the entire period that all was well with regards to jobs- creation and labor market sustainability. 

Can anyone make the connection to the oil lies revealed by the Guardian and the ongoing employment disaster? It’s likely that increases in energy costs have been offset by reducing wage expenses. Cutting workers is an expedient, not a solution. Reductions in force cut businesses’ customers at the same time so- called labor productivity is increased. The consequences of this shortsightedness are playing out across the country. Real buying power has been sacrificed for phantom ‘productivity’. Without customers with money in their wallets, there is no business!

Better to put greater numbers of workers to useful, remunerative work. A problem is the establishment does not know how to do this. Current management practice is schooled toward firing. It is easy to find managers to lay off thousands, easier to find a plasterer than to engage a manager who can hire and organize multitudes. 

The greater obstacle is the comforting lies the establishment tells itself. Why change anything when the scenario is rosy?