The long-feared possibility of executive branch agencies manipulating economic statistics has long been explained as “they’ll never touch something so important”. Well folks, they have and they will. The independence of economic agencies is particularly important, as we have seen with the president meddling in the federal reserve. If investors cannot be co disentangled in the statistics the government reports, that is disastrous for a working economy
>But in this case, the adjustment was enough to shave roughly a tenth of a percentage point off the monthly change in the core Personal Consumption Expenditures price index
>The bureau provided no public disclosure of the change. Economists learned about it only when they reached out to the agency to understand why their forecasts had been so far off.
…
>Mr. [Omair] Sharif said he did not believe the change was politically motivated. But Courtney Shupert, an economist at MacroPolicy Perspectives, another forecasting firm, said such decisions undermine public confidence in the statistical system.
“It seems like we are moving to more of a vague, uncertain, cloudy data quality environment that is going to make market participants less confident in the data that we do receive,” Ms. Shupert said.
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Submission statement:
The long-feared possibility of executive branch agencies manipulating economic statistics has long been explained as “they’ll never touch something so important”. Well folks, they have and they will. The independence of economic agencies is particularly important, as we have seen with the president meddling in the federal reserve. If investors cannot be co disentangled in the statistics the government reports, that is disastrous for a working economy
>But in this case, the adjustment was enough to shave roughly a tenth of a percentage point off the monthly change in the core Personal Consumption Expenditures price index
>The bureau provided no public disclosure of the change. Economists learned about it only when they reached out to the agency to understand why their forecasts had been so far off.
…
>Mr. [Omair] Sharif said he did not believe the change was politically motivated. But Courtney Shupert, an economist at MacroPolicy Perspectives, another forecasting firm, said such decisions undermine public confidence in the statistical system.
“It seems like we are moving to more of a vague, uncertain, cloudy data quality environment that is going to make market participants less confident in the data that we do receive,” Ms. Shupert said.