Welch RABID!

There are ways to get publicity.

There are ways to stroke your ego.

And then there is Jack Welch’s way. Tweet something that is so far off base that it generates negative comments, reports, and criticism from numerous sources.

Last week, when favorable unemployment numbers came out from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Welch tweeted: “Unbelievable jobs numbers…these Chicago guys will do anything…can’t debate so change numbers.”

Former General Electric CEO Welch basically said the BLS cooked the numbers. He was criticized by many financial experts some even suggesting a Welch dementia.

Yesterday in an Op Ed piece for the Wall Street Journal Welch almost defended his tweet. He said he should have put a series of question marks after the tweet suggesting that he was just  raising the question. He went on to explain why he thinks the BLS’s numbers were implausible.

Maybe for Mr. Welch manipulating numbers is a way of business. A study by economists at Duke and Emory Universities found that 20-percent of public companies, “manage earnings to misrepresent economic performance.”

(I would not have known about that study if it were not for Mark Gongloff, Chief financial writer for the Huffington Post who pointed it out in his column on The Blog yesterday.)

Just for the record, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been around since 1884 and collects, processes, analyzes and disseminates essential statistical data to the Department of Labor and to the public. Their record of honesty is impeccable.