That's kind of my point. They put out these "growth estimates" hoping for a psychological bounce that creates a self-fulfilling prophesy. Then they provide inflated numbers at the end of the quarter and then quietly revise them down later. In other words, at the end of a quarter or month they might report higher GDP growth than actually happened. That gets wide exposure in the press. Then they revise those numbers down in subsequent reports and the revisions don't get as widely reported.
And today we have:
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits jumped 25,000 to a seasonally adjusted 429,000, up from a slightly upwardly revised 404,000 the preceding week, the Labor Department said. Economists polled by Reuters were expecting claims to slip to 392,000 from the previously reported 403,000.
So every week/month/quarter we get these "unexpected" results. How many times does the result have to be "unexpected" before it dawns on them that the people they are polling have their heads up their asses?
Unemployment is going to settle but not because there are fewer people unemployed. It is because of how the data are collected. First of all "new claims" will go down as companies cut to the bone and simply can't lay off anymore. It doesn't mean they are hiring, it just means they have laid off all they can and remain in business.
Secondly, the unemployment figure itself will begin to drop as benefits expire for more people. Once your benefits end, you are no longer "unemployed" in government statistics. So as more people run out of benefits, the "official" unemployment number will drop but the number of people actually working won't rise.
One needs to look at labor force participation which is currently at a lower rate than it was in the late 1970's.
Anyway, these past two weeks are where the wheels begin to fall off the cart. Quantitative easing is ending. Who is going to fund Obama's deficit once the fed stops the printing press? The dollar is now at record lows relative to commodities and the Swiss Franc. If interest rates rise, it causes another housing crisis but they need to raise rates to attract lenders to buy treasury debt.
The bottom line is that it looks like the administration has painted itself into a corner and it looks intentional. Rather than addressing the problem, they simply treated the symptoms and now they have run out of treatment. Rather than stopping the bleeding, they have been simply getting more towels to wipe it up. Now they are out of towels and the patient is still bleeding. In fact, they have made the problem worse.
Pabst Blue Ribbon - The beer that made Gerlach famous.
They're dumping them as fast as they can. 
