Numbers Lie, Friend. They Always Do.

by

They handed us good news this week. Jobs up, inflation cooling. The kind of numbers that usually send the market into a sugar rush. Except it didn’t. The tape turned sour, a slow bleed on a Friday afternoon. Makes a man wonder what everyone else missed, or maybe, what they chose to ignore.

On the surface, it looked clean. A tidy little story about a resilient economy. But I’ve been around long enough to know that tidy stories are usually just illusions. The devil, as they say, isn’t in the details. He is the details.

The Fine Print

The job numbers? A mirage. Healthcare and social assistance did the heavy lifting. Government money propping up the figures. It’s a temporary fix, a Band-Aid on a broken bone. Strip that away, and last year’s job growth looks less like a boom and more like a polite cough. They revised the numbers downward, of course. They always do. Two million down to a measly 584,000. That’s a drop, not a climb.

Inflation? Another trick of the light. Moody’s Zandi pointed out the government shutdown last fall. They basically pretended prices didn’t move for a month and a half. Convenient, wouldn’t you say? He figures the real rate is closer to 2.7%. That’s a number the Fed won’t like. They like stories, not facts.

They’ll tell you inflation is coming down. It was at 3% last September. True enough. But remember the shutdown. It’s like playing poker with a marked deck. You think you’re winning, but you’re just being led along.

This isn’t a clear picture, friend. It’s a smudge. If inflation stays stubbornly above the Fed’s target, and the job market doesn’t exactly sing, those interest rate cuts everyone is hoping for? They’ll remain a distant dream. The Fed will play it safe, and the market will pay the price.

We need a few more months of clean data. A few months without political games and accounting tricks. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. The truth, like a good bourbon, is often bitter. And the market prefers its illusions sweet.

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2026-02-13 20:42