According to the latest GDPU, the economy has tanked.

We compile the GDPU at the King Tut Laundromat and Tiki Bar, where we wash socks, slurp frozen daiquiris and apply our scientific method to the nation's economic pulse.

GDPU means Gross Domestic Pedro Update, or PU for short, in which we join Pedro for a smoke in the parking lot and ask how things are going.

The PU competes with that well-known measure of economic growth, the GDP, which government economists cook up to make a dung heap smell like a rose, propping up the fantasy of economic prosperity in which we lounge in hammocks at Tiki bars and heft frozen daiquiris to wash down our Prozac.

Politicians, bureaucrats and government toadies, who include Wall Street types and government-regulated radio and television commentators, say the economy is growing.

They may notice something amiss when hungry mobs cut them off from their private jets and threaten to torch their Manhattan offices.

Until then, inflation is low, the economy is growing, and they dig into the matter of where to plant the decaying corpse of a would-be starlet.

No wonder the government and the press largely favor gun control. If things get out of hand, they know who might get shot.

Notice that the GDPU has one letter more than the government's GDP. This gives it the aura of authority it well deserves.

John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics, unaware of the PU, calls GDP "the most widely followed business indicator reported by the U.S. government. Upward growth biases built into GDP modeling since the early 1980s, however, have rendered this important series nearly worthless as an indicator of economic activity."

Williams adds, "The construct of the GDP is heavily reliant on economic theory."

Our PU does not rely on economic theory. It comes from field observations. Pedro has his boots on the ground and not his butt in a chair.

Williams writes, "I respect the intellect and creativity of those who have anchored their careers in academia. Frankly, though, most economic theories have little practical use in the real world."

We consider this a validation of our PU methodology, and I will thank Mr. Williams as soon as he takes my calls.

Williams corrects government economic data for people who need the real scoop. He says government overmeasures growth and undermeasures inflation.

Other private analysts agree. Here's what that means.

Although final figures will not come out till later this month, let's say the government claims the economy grew by 2.5 percent in 2006, adjusted for inflation. They also claim the CPI, or consumer price index, was 2.5 percent in 2006. Many private analysts say real price inflation is at least 3 percent higher.

What do you think?

Subtracting that additional 3 percent of price inflation from the alleged 2.5 percent growth gives us minus 0.5 percent, a likely recession.

The PU confirms it.

Ask Pedro how business is going and the electrician shrugs his shoulders and says "bad." Some of his friends have fled the Florida construction bust and fanned out across the country. Business is bad there, too.

Pedro bought a truck from a salesman at a dealership who had sold three vehicles the whole month.

He drives by scores of empty homes that used to be for sale and are now for lease.

Yet the stock market is high, and government paints a rosy economic picture through its beholden television mouthpieces.

There appears a disparity between the real economy we experience and the fantasy economy about which we are told.

If we observe the PU, we can sniff out the truth.

Phil Lucas is executive editor of The News Herald in Panama City, Fla. Contact him at [email protected]. To find out more about Lucas and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.