Conversation 536-004

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I have a question.

You have one word first.

I think that it's simply going to have to be made clear to Moore, who has just offered his resignation to us, that that be accepted.

Because he's the one who approved this release, and he said if we transfer this to Goldstein, that he will resign.

Which I think may be it.

Maybe the right solution.

I think it is the right solution.

What did they do?

They're fighting it.

They're fighting it on a target.

What are they looking for?

Nothing.

They admit that the release is terrible.

Did you read it?

I read the news on it.

I read the papers.

New York Times.

I read the New York Times every day.

The New York Times is bad.

They screwed this.

It's just that simple.

And I said, well, sure, there was a C. I understand it's a fiscal aberration.

What were they doing?

Why didn't they say that there were scrap bridges when they went up?

Are they saying this figure is wrong?

They're casting evidence.

No, but then, my God, then they're casting off some of their other figures, don't they?

That's right, but they, uh, it's badly handled, Mr. President.

In my opinion, Ward, who's been up, who I've been with him for the last hour, is a weak guy who doesn't understand the politics of this at all.

And I think he simply has to tell Hodgson, you want him out of there.

Hodgson's fighting to protect him.

George admits that, George Shultz admits that it was very badly handled.

But thanks to God, he just fixed the procedure so it doesn't happen again.

So, that's... Goddamn weak soldiers.

They're all right.

They're fighting for an hour.

Oh, he fought with them.

More on our department's part.

Oh, Jesus.

He fought with them.

I just watched this guy for an hour.

I said, look, we have to be cautious.

We have to protect ourselves.

He's just protecting these goddamn bureaucrats.

And I said, well, Goldstein's going to have to go.

And he said, well, if Goldstein goes, Goldstein's not going to testify yesterday.

Goldstein's supposed to.

I thought he was supposed to.

You can't prevent, of course, the committee from saying, well, he's not going to testify.

No, he's not going to testify.

I think the better force is to take a month and admire him, but not bullshit.

You see what I mean?

We have a problem with Moore.

That is, he was appointed to judge.

He has three weeks.

Yes, indeed.

And we've got time to go.

It's a week.

The only way we can get rid of him is if he offers his resignation.

All right.

Eddie Walker, I mean, I'll accept it next month.

He's done it this morning for us if we want to take him up.

See what I want to do?

I want to do it.

I'd like to do it in terms of a

Not in terms of an immediate story, but in terms of one smart way to handle it.

Otherwise, you're going to have a next month when there won't be much significant change.

And no, it's nothing to argue about.

We just accept it.

But one thing we can do is take it and say,

One thing we can do, Mr. President, is I want to bring this on the bench and see me.

I don't want to see .

I think you ought to see .

But I think the one thing, Mr. President, that you should insist upon is that they reorganize that bureau.

And in the process of reorganizing, I think we'll get this guy's resignation.

And we'll put in a politician.

That's what we've got to have.

He shouldn't be making the kind of judgments he made yesterday.

What is Christ's mannerism?

He's a little wizened up, crusty kind of economist who just is going to protect his figures and his people to the death.

I just said to him, look, don't you think you have any obligation to be on the Bureau of Witness Statistics?

And he said, no, this is an independent operation.

I'm there to give figures.

Was he asked why it was that they didn't put up on the creeds two months, three months?

That was the point, you see.

He says they always did, but they didn't do it in such a way that it created these kind of things.

I mean, it's a bad way for him to release George Shultz before he can do it, isn't it?

It's terrible.

I think what we do is to leave him there.

He didn't have to take it this way, so he's got to let it hang there.

See, what I'm saying, I think we got there.

I think we ought to be moving.

But I think we've got to get a man.

And then just go ahead and say, I'm sorry, I want to change.

Get the man first.

I don't have a man for it now.

See, Goldstein will be the acting director when Moore goes.

He's the assistant director at the present time, right?

That's right.

That's what this son of a bitch is.

He's the director for labor statistics.

I don't know what this is for.

I don't know what that is.

So you see, we don't have a man.

I want to get a man who can be, who can go in.

And you say, all right, we're going to go in.

In other words, I don't know.

You say we don't want it to happen again, and then next month say, I'm sorry, we're going to get another man.

Well, it seems to me, Mr. President, that the only lever that you've had is to tell Chiltern Hutchinson this morning that you want that bureau reorganized in such a way that we have control over it, period.

And in the process of that,

The guys you don't want, you quit.

Now, Schultz's people feel it should be reorganized.

Why haven't they done it before?

I don't know, sir.

Because Moore doesn't want it to be reorganized.

You see, if you say to Schultz that you want that reorganized, then it will happen, because...

Right.

All right, get ready.

Yes, sir.

The thing that I think is inexcusable here is that we all know about the physical aberrations.

But if you call us, unless you're politically naive, why is it that when it went to 6.1, 6.2, why didn't they say that was a physical aberration?

Are they saying this figure is wrong?

You see my point?

They can't say on the one hand that this drop is wrong and the others were too high.

We had never said, I've heard Stein and all these people have written memoranda on them.

You see the point?

It cuts both ways.

Are they admitting this figure is wrong?

I said, I have to say that I've never seen a more deliberate job done on anything.

It doesn't make any difference.

What happens is my appointment could come down.

They're not going to give me any credit for it.

Now, I know these little bastards, and you folks have got to understand.

I sat there, and we were there in the room when I said it.

We have a bunch of people in the bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy, screw us.

That's what they're doing.

It's pooped.

Now, if you've got something to say, go ahead and find him.

If you haven't got anything to find him, don't figure out what to do about it.

Here, Jim Hodgson goes out and does a very good job.

No, no, no.

They just threw him, too.

Make him look like a goddamn fool, as if he were doing it for political reasons.

Now, what are we going to do?

Here's more.

He's an ass.

A little bastard that we've got to market.

and totally, totally dedicated to bureaucracy, with no dedication to this administration.

None.

Goldstein, as it is you know, has been an enemy of this administration and of Eisenhower's administration for 25 years, to my knowledge.

You say, but he's an economist.

He's a scholar.

So is Ellsberg.

Now, I want to know, what in the hell does anybody suggest on this?

That's all.

You understand?

You do, guys.

You've taken the heat.

You do the job.

You go out and defend.

You have to go out and defend Seegers, but God damn it.

How the devil can you expect Jim to go out and take all the brickbats from the press and then have these guys just out of the pieces with their releases?

That's not right.

You can't have a capital officer in that position.

And so we just have to determine what we're going to do about it.

That's all.

We've got to have a plan.

Now, I know

We mustn't do anything because it'll be repressing.

And so, well, maybe we can reorganize it maybe after 1975 or this and that.

I don't want to hear anything like that.

But I want to know, what do we do about it now?

What can we do now so that we get at least an even shake?

Why didn't they say in April or even in this release that the figures on April and May were too high?

Because you see, they say flatly, I'm bright enough to know the figure dropped from 6.2 to 5.6.

It probably didn't have a 6-point drop.

That was your point that you made to me.

It was probably only 5.9 before, or 5.8.

Why the hell didn't they say so?

We took all or half of that from just knocking our brains off when it went up.

No.

All they say, well, this is a collaboration.

And that's all they care about.

Chancellor, did you hear that son of a bitch?

Cut you to pieces.

He had right to.

He's against this.

You give him anything to do it with and he does it.

We've all agreed, Mr. President, that the newsmen, we can't blame this one on the newsmen.

You never blame the newsmen anyway.

They're against us.

And they're going to write it that way, take it all like Daniel Dale is an honest reporter, not particularly against us.

But he had to write it that way because we gave him the ammunition.

He didn't have to do it.

He put a good job.

You can't get a fellow to sit like that and say, look, we don't want your dining halls because you're our friend.

Now, that's the point.

But that shows you that we have, we have all the time, but we can't get, when I raised this 32 years ago on this phone, I know you've been at it for a long time.

And the whole point is, I don't, I'm not, I'm not denying, I don't want to deny the facts.

I don't want to tell you the facts.

But I want to screw us

I never wear it wrong, but I wanted to do it even-handed, and they're not doing it that way.

They are not doing it that way.

Every release has been loaded against us, and deliberately.

But more of the smart, not-to-know-how goals than rights.

More than a great writing show.

IQ about 35.

But he was totally loyal to the bureaucracy.

Who the hell recommended him?

Archer.

So he came from Archer's outfit, I know.

There was a black book that was prepared by Peter Fletcher's group under Vera Glyde.

Well, there's nobody to blame for that choice.

We've got the government, that's all.

He's there to defend the bureaucracy and to cut us up, including...

Jim, I'm not going to have the Secretary of Labor go out.

I'm not going to have Flanagan go out and face a hostile press and then have bureaucrats come down.

That's what I'm talking about.

I'm not going to have any more.

And whenever a bureaucrat does it, we've got to do something about it.

We've got to plan, Flanagan.

We are going to do anything.

We've got to have some plan, George.

Well, I think the only kind of organization that would be sensible under these circumstances is a

Reorganization that separates Goldstein from the important figures and gets them into something else entirely.

I don't think the President ever has any confidence in any of their arrangements.

The VFR should check it out.

Secretly, after you were out as a dean, the secretary did a wonderful job.

But he says he's got that Goldstein, he's chomping him up.

Listen, I was...

Because I know this power.

It's given all three to believe that they're honest men in bureaucracy.

They're arguing.

They're counting.

So if we come to know where they belong better, the more that they destroy us.

You know, I was being recorded to people who were slurring, and I can remember wild arguments of the BLS that I had in the

I don't believe in lying to ourselves about what the figures are.

I want the truth.

Like in polls, I never lie to myself.

I never, I mean, I never lie.

I want to see a good poll simply because that upholsters it.

It's a good one.

If it's always bad on any issue or any individual, that's what kills you.

On the other hand, I don't want to see this be naive.

I just don't believe we need to sit here and take it.

We ought to be able, smart enough, to know how to handle a son of a bitch like this.

And on the first point of not killing ourselves, what do the figures really say?

The more I've looked at them, the more we've talked about it.

the more I'm convinced that there really is a movement in some kind of climate figure.

And the point of that that no matter how you go back and rearrange the seasons, if you compare last November or last January with June, you have a fairly marked decline.

Some seasonal adjustment factors distribute that over the months.

The one that BLS is using concentrates it all in one month, and that's why it's... What?

Concentrates it all in one month.

It makes it look like there's something...

But anyway, from the standpoint of... Yeah, but my point is, my point is that they concentrate it all in one month.

Does that then not make their months?

Right.

To make it long.

That's the thing that the son of a bitch should have said.

They just want to say it's a seasonal aberration.

But the 6.2 was wrong.

The 6.1 was wrong.

It was probably 5.8, 5.9.

That's why you've got to figure it out.

Another method of doing it would have a half of January rate of 6.3 rather than 6.0, and would have it coming down to 5.8, which is a five-tenths drop.

The method they're using had it at 6.0 in January.

It was 6.2 by May at 5.6.

So that's a four-tenths drop.

But if you just get away from the levels and say, is it declining or not, all of your methods wind up by the time you get to the same deadline.

I'm questionably down.

That's what you said in your question.

Yeah, I'm questionably down.

Adult categories, you see, aren't affected by the tuned age.

They are affected by the school fees.

And adult categories are improved so that they have to be better.

But the way it is reported is that simply because the extent of the law is questioned, they try to hold down.

Now that's the way it's explained.

And it's played because you could say that they've got the imagination to play with it.

Right.

They're obviously a whole other person.

Of course, that always happens.

That was pretty slow.

You see, that was the lead.

The number of jobless is increasing.

Well, the first sentence in the release is the trigger.

Plus this box that I'm sure you've seen in effect undermines the job.

Chancellor says those looking for jobs, the largest in 10 years.

That was his lead.

That was Goldstein's rhetoric.

The largest in 10 years.

I know, but we don't have to let him sit there and cut us.

I think he's an old man.

He's the level of job that we control.

I think he is a serious civil service guy, but I think he's a funny one.

He's assistant director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

How the hell isn't he in the job that we have?

He's the head of the employment union.

Isn't that his name?

Well, they call it.

I got it right here.

Harold Goldstein, Assistant Commissioner of Labor Statistics.

Now, that's a presidential appointment.

You're an assistant commissioner of labor statistics.

The EOS, Mr. President, I believe, has a little different structure.

The commissioner is appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate, for a fixed term, which I believe is five years.

Sort of like an agency.

It used to be an independent agency.

Well, our question is not whether to move Goldstein out of there, but how, and how to do it in a way that, well, I suppose you could deliberately choose to do it in a flamboyant way, and make an issue out of this, and play it up.

and go right out of that in that manner.

The way that we had talked about this morning, and I don't know enough about the organizational possibilities here to be sure, is that, at least in the opinion of my fellow Julie Shiskin, the BLS is in need of review organization anyway.

The Bureau of Digital Organization plans

proposed with all of the statistical agencies in one box and merging the Census Bureau, which is by all odds the most professional of the statistical agencies, with the Office of Business Economics and the BLS and the Department of Agriculture and so on.

But that is a big project that requires legislation and so on.

In turn, within the BLS, we can probably do some

fairly substantial reorganization on our own motion.

In fact, I'm sure we can do that and rearrange it in such a way that Goldstein can be assigned to something where he isn't directly astride the impugned victim.

Now, I'm sure that to approximate it all, there would be a certain transparency about that.

But nevertheless, there's a, that is maybe getting something worthwhile out of it.

In fact, I've been talking for about three months now about waiting until this business of canceling the hearings cooled off.

We've got approximately, I forgot the interest in that subject.

And then we will see what happens.

with this very idea that we're just a matter of time.

Well, any time you do it, Proxima is going to raise hell.

You might as well bite the bullet and hit it over.

He's going to make a fuss over this anyway.

All right, let me tell you to do this.

Let me ask you to do this.

First of all, the dressing machine is all you've got.

Keep it.

I don't know if you want to take it or not.

You can just have it in advance.

But I want to see a plan.

I want to see a plan to protect themselves.

So I don't want anything to, I just, I want an honest man.

I want an honest man that'll call it our way if it's our way and call it the other way if it is our way.

And we've got to have, we've got to have controls.

Certainly the releases have got to be written objectively and honestly.

Now, you just can't have them going out and cutting us.

All right, I want to get a polygraph.

He's the one that gave off these instructions.

Was he the one who gave the statement that was in the paper right at the same time?

No, no person in BLS gave that statement.

The statement, by its own admission, has been developed by the Associated Press.

And the U.P.

man says he got it from the Associated Pressman, and he told our guys to get an Associated Pressman coverage.

Yes, the Associated Pressman coverage then picked up the date for the 1930s from our place, not from the L.S., but from the Public Information Office, the later department.

The reason is part of him has run on gold, this particular one.

He picked it up there at 9.30, went into the adjacent room, filed his report immediately, and it was on wire from 9.42, so that there was no chance that he heard it.

I think that the release itself, you pick up this release and look at it, and what comes roaring out at you is,

that some big thing has happened here, but the BLS doesn't believe that that's the message.

The problem, Mr. President, the problem isn't the free statistical quirk.

Wherever that came from is not a big problem.

It's the basic press release itself.

There's something that's happened here that we don't believe in.

That's right.

Why the hell didn't they say it was 6.10?

I don't mind saying 6, but they shouldn't say 5.6.

That puts a hell of a credibility problem.

It looks like we're political, George, as hell.

We're making up figures.

How are we going to make up these goddamn figures?

It's their figure.

And from their standpoint, as well as ours, but from the professional statistician's standpoint, what they have...

or what they're threatened with here, I think, is the destruction of, on the whole, the best statistical series there is.

This is the largest sample that anybody takes.

It's a much better sample than any poll provided by us.

This is 55,000 households they sample.

And they do it monthly.

It's a terrific sample.

And it's just done by the Bureau of Census, not by the BLS.

The Census takes the data, and they turn that data over to the BLS, and the BLS does the analysis.

Now, some years ago, the Census used to do the whole thing, produce a release on the basis of the so-called statistical survey.

collection of employment information from employers based on payroll records.

And oftentimes the payroll records that have employment going up, say, and household going down, are vice versa, are not necessarily consistent.

And in order to get around that, there was developed first a joint release, which they tried to give a reconciliation, and then the BLS acquired the

right to do the whole thing.

So one possible thing would be to go back to the O-11, put the census through the whole business, and put out the release of the Household Survey with some kind of interaction with the employment.

That's one organizational rearrangement to separate the whole state from completely.

And I'm sure that they are.

But anyway, it's a very good example, but they're going to destroy it.

at us then.

Plus the, I think, the politicians on the other side who are seeking, particularly Proxmire, to somehow manipulate these figures and so dominate a hearing and intimidate these people.

Proxmire had no

seems to have no thought at all or no consideration at all for the professional underpinning of this material and how awkward it is.

Not only the politicians on the other side, but the press on the other side.

I say not only the politicians on the other side, but the press on the other side.

Any news you put out, there's always something that's good and something that isn't so good.

And so they pick out the isn't so good stuff.

You've got to fight skillfully.

You need a new man.

Can you get more?

Let me say, ease him out.

Put a strong man in the job.

That's what I think you need.

A strong man.

See, Moore doesn't run the church.

Goldstein runs it.

He runs the department over there.

They're always asking him.

They're not inviting Moore down, are they?

Yeah, or Goldstein.

We won't let Goldstein go up there without Moore anymore.

But Goldstein's the one that gets quoted because of that.

I think this is a very significant problem.

I never met him before this morning, but he doesn't believe

Unemployment's going down.

We do.

I think there's another basic difference.

Oh, yeah.

He believes it's going down, but he questions the extent of it.

That's... Well, you've got a guy in that position with that kind of an attitude.

He isn't going to... Well, I don't... Chuck, as far as I'm concerned, that is not the issue to me.

I'm not sure it's going down.

I'm not sure.

The main thing is this.

It's all politics.

If it doesn't go down, it doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference.

But we've got these, it's just a question that every month a story comes out.

Even when it goes down, it appears that it goes up, for Christ's sakes.

And then when it goes up, it always goes up.

We don't get any good stories during the 6.1 to the 6.2, you know.

Those are murderous stories.

Then it goes down, and it's a bad story again.

Negative as hell.

Excuse me.

Well, I wanted to do some thought.

George, you and Jim worked out here.

You're over there.

And you work with Chuck in the city.

As far as this little boy, Mark, put somebody who is ballsy in.

Find a man before you get him out.

And he did.

And he got his resignation about a month.

Find a man.

I let Mark go back to Columbia.

And he was the national hero.

Get him a nice job.

There you go.

Somebody will buy him a national city mayor or something.

He'll be like him.

He's going to go and get it.

But get a man in charge.

I mean, a man who evolves, you know.

Who is?

Remember, the guy that's in that job may be more important in terms of our public relations than Secretary Lieberman.

Because those figures coming out every month, I mean, now in the election, Jim, are going to be.

And you'll go out and they'll sit you in functions line, as I appointed me.

Head of the Bureau of Labor will think you're about as different.

And more or less get sick or something.

Probably sick anyway.

All I wanted to know, I just don't think he's leading his department.

I don't want to make it clear.

I don't want anybody to fudge any figures around here.

Never.

I mean, damn it, if it's gone up, fine, we'll see it through.

I don't want to see when we go, I don't want to see this goddamn business of not listening.

When they drop it both ways, we can't have that charge.

We can't have that kill us.

And, uh, like the, uh, like you say, it's like, like, if you get one of these, these lightbringers in the fourth house, if you were here casually, it's like,

21 last week.

And they'll say it was the third highest this month.

Third highest week this month.

Nice.

It's been back in the woods for seven years.

We're getting that one up.

Look, I know the problem, but by this thing that you have to do, then I think you've got to reorganize.

You don't have to reorganize, should you?

Don't you think so?

Well, as I was saying, I've just been waiting for this thing to cool from our last thing and get that thing to move up, and then doing some kind of reorganization study.

Malik was working with me on that.

Can you find a man?

Well, it's not very good at that, is it?

How about you?

reorganizing it to get Goldstein out of the line of, as George says, sitting on the employment statistics.

Why don't you get an honest, why don't you get an honest, George, why don't you get a totally honest statistician who's not unfriendly to us and would be respected, like Alan Wallace would be too.

No.

See, that's what he's doing now.

He's not an economist.

Huh?

You see, he's the kind of man, the kind of man you want.

He's not an economist.

He's a statistician.

He's damn good, though.

But that guy wouldn't lie for anybody.

Either way, that's what I want.

I just want a son of a bitch who isn't going to lie for anybody, not for them or for us.

And so if we did that kind of a break, we'll do okay.

But what we're getting here, you see, you fellows have got to realize we are getting political interpretation of these statistics by people within the Bureau of Labor Statistics and all ways of instance.

That's all.

That's what I want to stop.

That's all.

The political interpretation.

I don't want them to interpret it for us, but I don't want them to design instance.

That's what I'm talking about.

Now, otherwise, I say we can go out

Jim, as I say, you go out sometimes, but Jim and John Tomlin particularly now, they'll be out on these things, they're going to say something, and they say, well, that looks as if we're just damn fools.

Well, why don't you just put your mind, put a good bet on the reorganization side, and you, Jim, see what you can come up with in terms of a,

There must be a man out there in this country who's good enough to do this job.

And Moore, Moore is shaken in this and that.

Let him stick around.

Moore, the problem is, as you say, theoretically dominates him rather than the others around him.

The thing about Wallace is that nobody dominates Allen.

He'll dominate the group around him.

He's got an unusually strong personality.

He said, it's against the privilege.

You can always leave a man.

You know Wallace.

Oh, sure.

He worked with me on that committee.

It was sort of a body of action, but he did a fine job.

But nevertheless, a cabinet committee on economic stability.

He's the kind of guy that should be totally on.

He's happened to be with us from a philosophical standpoint.

but he'd come in and tell you the worst for the best.

But he's totally honest.

And also, he's not like Arthur in the sense that if he makes a prediction that's wrong, he then sends the rest of his life trying to prove it, even if it's bad for the country.

See, that's what we don't want either.

Well, anyway, do your best.

And if not more, let him go back over and work with his numbers.

But, do you understand what I mean?

What we need here is to, what we really need is to, is to get an organization plan.

Is that exactly what you think it should be?

A reorganization plan?

But don't we have to do it pretty fast?

You see, my point is, we've got some, we've got some, we've got some, we've got some, we've got some, we've got some, we've got some,

Uh, good morning.

Hi.

In the summer, everybody expects things in the indulgences.

But why?

Because you can't wait too long, because the closer you get to 1972, the more this would look.

Well, I'm going to set a deadline by the end of this summer.

Well, why don't we say the 1st of September?

Labor Day.

That's a good thing.

Labor Day, Bureau of Labor, is to be reorganized or abolished.

I would prefer the latter.

You can't do it.

Put it back in the census bureau.

In the census bureau, he shouldn't be there.

Congress and labor should be together.

Well, of course, later put the whole thing together is what really makes good sense.

You know, what disturbs me, George, is to relate to you too.

You get this bag of numbers.

The Department of Commerce comes up with this and this and this.

The Labor Department comes up with this and this and this.

Leave the Fed out of it.

They have nothing.

You know, really, I think the economic statistics should be in one bag.

That's why, of course, let me say this.

You know, what we're really doing, you see, under our reorganization plan in Hollywood.

Sure, that's a great value.

All right, why don't we try to do that?

In other words, get that put in one place as unemployment, cost of living.

Who gives out cost of living?

The L.A. Who gives out the indicators?

The Congress.

Not that.

They're all related to each other.

You've got, you've got... GND, who gets sent out for commerce.

You've got... No, they have to check with BLS, don't they?

Don't they check with each other?

You've got the Census Bureau.

Yeah.

But that's in commerce.

Is in commerce.

You've got the Office of Business Economics, which is also in commerce, but a different organization than the Census Bureau.

Yeah.

You've got the BLS.

Those are the three biggest.

Then you've got the Agriculture Department.

which concentrates on a whole bunch of things connected with the other arm.

Yeah, but they have a... That ought to be an act, too.

But don't you fellows agree that that is one of the best reasons for the...

for the consolidation of the U.S. House of Accounts Department of what you call, which is, as all my speeches are good, it is an example of what really could be done.

Because basically you could have that, what do you call it, what's that one?

Yeah, yeah, well this I'm going to go through now, but it will someday, but that's what we ought to have.

And you put agriculture in there too.

It ought to be in there.

It's ridiculous to have agriculture on one side and labor and management on another.

All these things really should go together.

They have non-farm employment, etc.

Well, they sure as hell don't relate to constituencies, and that's the way the charters are run.

All right.

Do your best.

One thing I want you to do, Jim, you get a go at him.

You give Conley a call.

He's in Texas.

Down there, they're giving a big Fourth of July party.

And just tell him what it really means so that he doesn't...

You can get the impression from the wires and so forth that there's nothing there.

That's a good idea.

We're just guessing a little.

We rock our seat and then we're working on turning this stand like a rock.

Okay?

You see?

Somebody's likely to catch them on it.

They made snide comments when I came out there yesterday.

I thought this was supposed to be done by the TV economics folks.

That kind of thing.

So it's a good idea.

Well, we have the chief, even though I'm supposed to be on the defense.

I'm glad it has to be.

I'll turn to everybody else.

Good luck.

Thank you.

What is it, July the 3rd?

Yes, sir.

The main thing is that you're convinced, or both of you are convinced, that the...

that unemployment did go down a little or some, right?

Do you think so?

Yeah, I think, as Shuskin keeps reminding us, it isn't so much May to June as it is June to January.

Over the past six months, just how that's distributed on a month-to-month basis is less important than the fact that since the expansion started, there have been inroads

Well, it's always your theory, too, George, that I understand, that that's the way it always happens, that unemployment begins to move.

Now, that doesn't mean it's going to keep moving down in the summer.

But you see, if we could get a big psychological kick out of this one, that could affect consumer sales.

I think the major important thing, these problems with the date of the survey and the statistical seasonal adjustment procedures

We'll probably bounce it back up some, a little bit, next month.

So there's going to be that, and that's... And watch the murders.

That'll probably give a better reading of what it really is, what it is, over a period of time.

Well, what about our summer youth jobs and our other jobs?

You won't have that factored in yet, huh?

No, that will have an impact.

When will that be?

When will that happen?

I don't know.

I don't know right now.

Jim, the new, I don't mean the summer youth are in now.

What about the others?

Well, so the appropriation comes out.

We've got 30 days after the appropriation comes out.

We'll start screening people in those counties.

Are you all ready?

Yeah, I've got an organization who's working on it.

I've got a man who's going to head it up.

You get those ready as good, particularly in California, so I assume.

Yeah, let's get them going.

I looked at those statewide figures again.

What you really come down to is California, Pacific Northwest, and that includes Montana, and some of the other little states up in that area.

The other south, the south is generally good, generally good.

That's more than Texas is good.

Minnesota is always, that's a little light, yeah, but above,

but quite better than California.

What the hell is the matter with Michigan?

They don't have any aerospace.

They, in Michigan, Michigan's worse than New York.

I'd say Connecticut, Michigan, West Coast, that's the way I would put it.

Connecticut, New Jersey, Michigan.

in terms of the states and the West Coast and, of course, Massachusetts.

What's the situation in Michigan?

What the hell's the trouble up there?

Well, I think the rise in unemployment had two factors with it.

One was the wind down of the war in aerospace, and the other was the effort to cool off the economy.

Yet the first set of factors operated on the West Coast and in Connecticut.

The second hit Michigan and New Jersey.

And Michigan got hit because the auto industry got hit so heavily.

And, uh, the, uh...

Okay, but I bought it by the number one.

No, by the, by the cooling off of the... Cooling off?

And that is not unexpected in the sense that the other kind of industry, the durable goods industry...

Yes, yes, I should... That's exactly what I was asking.

I got this coming back from the club.

Uh, the, the auto industry, I believe,

listening to Jim Roach talk about it with Townsend and others.

Since they did take quite a beating in 70, they did what you'd expect management to do.

They really made an effort to get their costs under control.

They cut a lot of people off.

The whole mechanical industry is about 14% of what it was about three years ago, including a lot of their white-collar people and so on.

And they try to figure out how to get along with Westlake because these rates are high.

And then when production started picking up, they have figured out how to get those cars out without hiring as many people back.

So in other words, the mission may have a rather permanent problem.

Well, Michigan is a more lingering problem than I think.

More lingering than California?

No, no.

That problem in California is at least a three-year problem.

Three years?

It takes that long enough for people to move the hell out of the ground.

They're starting to do that, but some are moving it away now.

At least no more coming in, are they?

I think, you know, he tells me that last year was the first year he moved more people out of California than he moved in.

First year.

Well, but you think California will take three years.

Well, we've been through one year already.

Well, I think...

When the economy starts really steaming, you'll be amazed at how a really prosperous economy will sop up Michigan, will sop up California.

You know, I just spent the figures, George, of you and Ervin, always preparing on what the government can do in terms of spending.

It's not much.

In fact, the only thing that's going to help, I think, well, it's something.

your, your, your, your, your job, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your,

The Bureau of Labor Statistics had those, I hope not.

Thank God.

Well, they're bad, too.

We all see that.

That's the problem.

They've been bad sometimes, but they're not much good.

Get Larry Head to work on that one.

Commerce has been doing pretty well, but Sarah Fessler is always able to keep the design.

What I meant is, just talk.

We're watching.

You know?

See?

I want it honest.

I don't want them to lie either way.

It's bad.

I don't mind.

Gosh, I wish we could have at least two groups talk to each other.

You know, it's like holsters.

Gallup and Harrison come up with very different things.

They all get into theory.

Because it raises the credibility about all the statisticians, you know, when they come up with a bunch of damn stuff.

Jarvis Wright, the BLS.

Why should you believe them?

I don't believe them.

They've cast out everything they said in the first, about six months, by what they say here.

And to, after all, all the proxmariners that wanted to believe and to repent,

Now, they've lost that in here.

See, Proxmire just said he was praising them from the skies for the first six months of Goldstein.

Courageous man, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Your labor statistics will not go under the pressure.

He's not saying that today.

See, that's the way it works.

It's all political.

It's almost as though they have enough of it under his pressure.

He's won.

He was very cheerful in this one.

Oh, yeah.

At least I understand he was supportive and he thought this was real good news, but that's clever of him.

That's the way he gets a hit, though.

Yeah.

Anyway, do your best.

You could, uh, after you finish, uh, check around and get to you and all that.

I'll meet you, uh, when you're done.

All right, sir.

Do you want me to say now or come back when we're through here?

Oh, thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Bye.