The Mirage of "Economic Recovery"

``In fiscal 2010, US private sector GDP actually contracted an estimated 0.1%; but with public sector spending growing at 6.3%, the government was able to claim an overall growth in GDP of 2.6%. Uncovering the truth in this way, we see that the US private sector also contracted in fiscal 2008 and 2009 by -0.5%, -9.7% respectively, so the private sector is still in recession after three years. This example illustrates that government can make the headline figures much better than the underlying reality. It is a simple distortion of the figures by ramping up government spending.''