The UK and Italy ready to boost GDP with hookers and coke

Let’s blow this MF up!

Yes indeed, Italy and the UK are now going to include cocaine sales and prostitution in their Gross Domestic Product calculations going forward.

Starting with Italy via Bloomberg:

Italy will include prostitution and illegal drug sales in the gross domestic product calculation this year, a boost for its chronically stagnant economy and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s effort to meet deficit targets.

Drugs, prostitution and smuggling will be part of GDP as of 2014 and prior-year figures will be adjusted to reflect the change in methodology, the Istat national statistics office said today. The revision was made to comply with European Union rules, it said.

Ah yes, those pesky European Union rules. No worries, the young Renzi is finally figuring out that the whole system is one big kleptocracy ponzi scheme, so might as well just stop bull shitting around and add in all that underground mafia liquidity to the national books.

Renzi, 39, is committed to narrowing Italy’s deficit to 2.6 percent of GDP this year, a task that’s easier if output is boosted by portions of the underground economy that previously went uncounted. Four recessions in the last 13 years left Italy’s GDP at 1.56 trillion euros ($2.13 trillion) last year, 2 percent lower than in 2001 after adjusting for inflation.

“Even if the impact is hard to quantify, it’s obvious it will have a positive impact on GDP,” said Giuseppe Di Taranto, economist and professor of financial history at Rome’s Luiss University. “Therefore Renzi will have a greater margin this year to spend” without breaching the deficit limit, he said.

Leave it to Zerohedge to sum everything up nice and neat:

Alas for Keynesian economists everywhere, since this “adjustment” largely shows that what one includes in GDP is now absolutely meaningless and for lack of a better word, a joke, it also means that the core concept of economic growth measurement has now officially jumped the shark.

Bravo Italy, talk about raising the bar for other leaders and countries around the world.

And that’s what it is all about: literally making numbers up allowing the government to spend even more money it doesn’t have on ridiculous political schemes, kickbacks, crony deals and corruption, and then when the people start to riot, blaming it all on “austerity.”

Not to be outdone, following on Renzi’s blow and blowjob GDP boost, the UK is now joining the fray.

From Zerohedge:

And now, riding on the coattails of this economics gimmick designed solely to make the economy appear more solvent, it is Britain’s turn, whose Office for National Statistics will also add add up the “contribution” made by prostitutes and drug dealers.

And the contribution is an f’in big deal. We are talking lots of mula. English statisticians are measuring the value to the UK economy of sex work and drug dealing and they have discovered that these trades make roughly the same contribution as farming and slightly less than book and newspaper publishers added together.

Some models kicked around, estimate that in 2009 the underground economy of illegal drugs and prostitution boosted the UK economy by £9.7bn or equal to 0.7% of gross domestic product in 2009, according to the Office for National Statistics’ first official estimate.

Hold on for a second. All these estimates sound fine and dandy but how the bloody hell is the UK going to get an accurate read on how much coke and paid sex UK citizens are consuming.

More insight via Zerohedge:

Here’s the problem: since one can’t put down on their tax return form that they have paid sex or deal drugs for a living, the ONS will have to estimate the economic contribution by these illegal professions. This is how it has gone about doing it:

According to the estimates there were 60,879 prostitutes in the UK in 2009, who had an average of 25 clients per week – each paying on average £67.16 per visit.

That’s right: there is now an excel model to calculate what the hypothetical GDP boost to a nation is. Making things even more surreal, and confirming the GDP calculation is officially a statistical joke, here is how drugs are accounted for:

So this is the brave new world we live in. Drones, drugs and pimping. Of course all of this is done under the moral, and exceptionalist, watchful eye of our western leaders.

For even and deeper explanation as to what is happening and why, we recommend watching the latest Keiser Report with the brilliant, no holds bar, Max Keiser.

The money line in the episode comes at the 1:20 minute mark of the video, with the use of numbers and indexes like GDP, CPI, and unemployment to report the economy, Keiser goes to explain…

“these numbers are fungible, these numbers and indexes, whether its the Dow Jones Index or the FTSE 100 Index, or some other oil based index, they are completely fungible on a month to month basis, based on the need of the banking kleptocracy in league with governments to project an economic tableau that accomplished two goals…

number 1, keep interest rates near zero and…
number 2, look as if their is little inflation.

But the fact is that interest rates at zero in turn facilitate cocaine and heroin use in terms of its impact on the economy, and of course that spreads to the global geo-political situation where countries like America end up invading Afghanistan, taking control of the poppy crop (which has never been higher), which of course supports the heroin use around the world, and then they are going to include that in GDP.

So they get a GDP boost from the militarisation of Afghanistan, from the heroin use of people strung out on smack and from the degrading effects of prostitution and gambling.

And this all contributes to GDP according to this new world paradigm.”

Leave it to Max to lay down one final zinger in this whole hoax…

So the Central Bankers condone prostitution, does that apply to their families, their daughters, their wives?

Ouch…well said Mr. Keiser.

References:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-22/cocaine-sales-to-boost-italian-gdp-in-boon-for-budget.html

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-22/hookers-and-blow-how-changing-definition-gdp-officially-jumped-shark

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-29/how-britain-calculates-its-hooker-gdp-boost-60879-prostitutes-x-25-clients-week-x-%C2%A36

https://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday/featured