I Was working late in my D.C. office. I'd been running some new simulations on my macro-model, but nothing was converging, so I figured I'd close up my spreadsheet and find a corner in some dark speak-easy to lick my wounds.
That's when she walked in. She had a
neckline as low as the Nasdaq in '01, curves like sine waves and a dress tighter than the global oil supply. She had my attention even before she pulled out two reports I'd seen that very morning.
"I'm sorry to barge in on you like this," she said in a voice that gave my calculator a power surge. "I didn't know where else to turn."
"You came to the right place, doll," I said. "I see you've got the first-quarter GDP report, along with the new compensation results." I'd been puzzling over these numbers all day, but what, I wondered, could this tall glass of ice water want with them?
"That's right," she purred. "I need to know why GDP is up 4.8%, the strongest quarter since 2003, yet real wages are falling." Yeah, I thought, you and everybody else who works for a living.
"Why the interest?" I shot back. She didn't look like a Democrat.
"I wish I could tell you. But I work for some powerful people" -- now I knew she wasn't a Democrat -- "and they'd be very upset if they even knew I was here."
"Why me? Why don't you ask your powerful friends to explain why the economy's racing ahead but leaving working stiffs behind?"
She got kinda sulky, and I kinda liked it. "They wouldn't know where to look. What's worse, most of them think it's great when wage growth decelerates because with no inflationary pressure from labor costs, it means the Fed can take a powder on rate increases."
"Tell me about it, sister. I've been leaning on Bernanke for months on that point, but he doesn't return my calls."
Needless to say, I took the case. I wasn't sure what game little Miss Conflicting Reports was playing, but I figured I'd play along for now.
Fact is, I'd been asking the same question myself. Every quarter we seemed to be getting great news on top-line statistics -- GDP, productivity, profits -- yet the typical workers' real earnings were down 2% over the recovery. Guys like me don't like it when things line up that way.
I headed for the union hall, figuring some of those guys might have an angle. Problem was, with private-sector unions down to 8% of the workforce, the hall had become a Starbucks. I got a vanilla chai latte to go and beat it.
