Wild miscalculations reported in Japanese economic data

Kyodo News is reporting that an economist was scanning Japanese Q4 2012 GDP data when he caught some egregious mistakes and reported them to the government.

As a result, some huge revisions were just announced to Q4 GDP, inflation and trade:

• Annualized nominal GDP was corrected to -0.5% from -1.3%
• Nominal quarterly GDP revised to -0.1% from -0.3%
• Exports -1.7% vs -1.3%
• Imports +0.5% from +3.0%
• GDP deflator to -0.2% from -0.4%

This is as bad as Rogoff-Reinhart. Businesses and central banks are making enormous decisions based on these numbers and someone in Tokyo didn't double check the numbers.