February 20, 2004

How to Spare White House Jobs Embarrassment

Crunch, Inc.'s Founder Says Machines Would Have Saved Bush

A Reston, Virginia firm that manufactures number crunching machines says it's delighted that the White House has distanced itself from a 2004 jobs growth projection, blaming "number crunchers" for being too optimistic.

"I give a little cheer every time a high-profile politician blames 'number crunchers' for something. The phones start ringing and our machines just fly off the shelves," said Gary Ringling, president of Crunch, Inc., a closely held company that has emerged in the last decade as the dominant player in the number crunching machine industry.

The latest assault on nameless number crunchers came a week after the Bush Administration sent its annual economic report to Congress. The report trumpeted a prediction that 2.6 million new jobs would be created during 2004. The prediction immediately drew criticism from economists and Democrats, who want to unseat President Bush in his reelection bid next fall.

On Wednesday, the White House backed away from the prediction, blaming "number crunchers" and saying that President Bush, who had trumpeted the jobs prediction last week, was not a statistician.

"People ask me why our business ticks up when someone condemns number crunchers, and I answer it's like that old business of telling children not to put beans in their ears," Ringling said. "I think it causes people who are about to make a claim based on numbers to stop and think, 'Hey, I need one of those machines to push the envelope as far as possible and still be certain I'm right.'

Ringling said that one of his biggest clients after the company developed its first number crunching machine in 1994 was the Clinton Administration. "Bobby Rubin thought we walked on water," Ringling said, referring to Robert Rubin, treasury secretary for much of the two Clinton terms as president.

He said that when Bush moved into the White House, staff members at first merely turned off the number crunching machines, preferring to rely exclusively on computers.

"Eventually, they called and asked us to take the machines away, even though they had to buy out the leases on them," Ringling said.

"Frankly, and I know this sounds like a sales pitch, but I think Bush and his people could have completely avoided this embarrassment if they'd kept our machines when they took office," Ringling added. "Our machines would have spotted the fallacy in the 2.6 million number right away."

Crunch's number crunching process is a closely guarded secret.
Traditional number crunchers treat numbers as abstract, non-physical entities and use computers to manipulate them electronically. A typical manipulation tool is Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet program.

Someone who has a Crunch machine feeds an Excel spreadsheet into the machine, which converts each number into microscopic pieces of a plastic-like material, whose composition is at the heart of Crunch's secret process. The pieces of plastic are then fed through a series of grinders, reducing it to a fine dust. This dust is scanned and converted back into electronic signals which a computer can read and manipulate.

Crunch claims that its process allows vastly increased amounts of unassailable information to be wrung from numbers.

Gerard Hinckley, director of Harvard University's Institute for the Study of Charlatans, said Crunch's success is due to mankind's ancient fascination with "black boxes."

"Medieval alchemists changed lead to gold," he said. "Stock market gurus feed data into a secret and very expensive black box and predict stock prices. What Crunch offers is a great tool for voodoo economists."

Ringling brushes aside such criticisms. "We plan to bring out a nut-filled chocolate bar soon. We're going to call it CompuCrunch," he said.

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