Economists Are Seriously Alarmed About Official Data Under Trump

https://newrepublic.com/post/198464/economists-alarmed-official-data-trump-economy-poll

by Silly-avocatoe

7 comments

  1. Economists Are Seriously Alarmed About Official Data Under Trump
    A new poll of economists finds an overwhelming majority agree that the U.S. government’s official data on the economy is a big problem.

    As the Trump administration guts and otherwise interferes with federal statistical agencies, nearly 90 percent of economists recently surveyed by Reuters are concerned about the reliability of official government data on the economy.

    From July 11 to 24, Reuters polled economists—including “Nobel Laureates, former policymakers, academics from top U.S. universities, and economists from major banks, consultancies and think tanks”—and found that 89 of 100 of them “were concerned about the quality of official U.S. economic data,” with 41 saying they are “very concerned.”

    MSNBC’s Steve Benen observed in an article earlier this month that the prospect of “corruption and political mischief” interfering with federal statistics under Trump is also worth keeping in mind. “Perhaps Donald Trump, the argument goes, might use his influence to tell the Labor Department to manipulate the data and deceive the public,” Benen wrote—though he noted “there’s been no evidence of statistics being altered to fit a political narrative” to date.

    Even setting that worrisome possibility aside, Trump’s war against trustworthy federal data already threatens to wreak real havoc.

    During a press conference last month, Fed chair (and MAGA persona non grata) Jerome Powell explained why we mustn’t take for granted “having good data” on the economy: This information, he pointed out, “doesn’t just help the Fed. It helps the government, it helps Congress, it helps the executive branch. More importantly, really, it helps businesses. They need to know what’s going on in the economy.”

  4. No data can be trusted coming out of this Administration and government in current form. Trust nothing and trust no one. Even the Democratic leadership is failing when they should so clearly be energizing their base, and easily making their case against Trump and his cronies.

  5. Trump’s a category 5 disaster

    But when exactly are economists not seriously alarmed?

  7. Yes but Trump, a famous economist, is not concerned though. So don’t worry.

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