Trump didn’t like last month’s weak Jobs Report, so he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and created and released his own.
BLS data is the bedrock for more than Wall Street investors. It is also used by businesses and many government agencies to make impactful decisions, including:
- Setting interest rates by the Federal Reserve,
- Legislation and rulemaking,
- Analyzing the impact of government policies,
- Planning budgets and services by local governments,
- Producing economic indexes, and
- Hiring, investing and compensation policies by business.
For a century, reliable economic data have driven the performance of American markets and its economy to be the world’s best.
Unreliable data, however, will drive decision-makers into waters where they have no footing.
Cooking the BLS books is consistent with Trump’s, big beautiful tax law. Both will widen wealth and income inequality as only the largest, most powerful companies and wealthiest individuals can afford access to private economic data, creating a winner take all economy.
The U.S. government collects and publishes a huge range of economic, social, environmental, and demographic data far beyond the BLS statistics. I can’t imagine the chaos that would ensue if the data were no longer trusted.
Twenty-nine other government agencies produce their own data. Trump could take a swipe at any of their data that doesn’t please him. He could tamper with it to:
- Back his claim that climate change is a hoax, which he’s already started.
- Allow RFK Jr. to continue falsifying data about the efficacy of vaccines and dismantling the Department of Health.
- Restructure the census, which Trump has already set his eyes on, in order to facilitate abusive Republican gerrymandering.
- Inflate GDP growth, employment and income numbers to mislead voters about the health of the economy,
- Minimize crime rates to brag about his Department of Justice and keep the NRA funding Republican candidates, and
- Minimize disease statistics to reduce healthcare funding (as he did in his big, beautiful bill).
The inability to rely on government data would render markets and the economy unmanageable and lead to far-reaching chaos such as:
- Surging interests,
- The inability to accurately price assets, leading to a plummeting stock market and gyrating housing prices,
- Accelerating the shift away from the dollar as a reserve currency,
- Poor credit decisions including in mortgage lending which caused the Great Recession of 2008, and
- A recession that Trump could mismanage into another depression.
- Bad insurance decisions that can render insurance companies unable to predict catastrophes or pay claims, and
- Flawed machine learningthat produces bad recommendations,
There’s no doubt that messing with data used to make essential decisions that can unleash pandemonium is not the behavior of a normal person. Trump is not normal. He checks all the boxes that mental health professionals’ use to diagnose a sociopath. The term refers to people who:
- Are incapable of experiencing guilt, shame, remorse, or empathy,
- Exhibit aggressive behavior,
- Verbally attack and insult their critics,
- Don’t admit mistakes,
- Intimidate and threaten to maintain control,
- Disregard social norms, rules, protocols and laws,
- Have difficulty controlling impulses, and
- Act without considering the consequences.
Sadly, the shoe fits our president. But the Congressional Republicans don’t suffer from the same affliction, so it’s more difficult to know why they enabled him by confirming the most unqualified and dangerous cabinet in America’s history and why they tolerate his ruinous behavior.
A small ray of hope: MAGA anger about the Epstein cover-up may be a launching pad for more abandonment of Trump.
Republicans are acutely aware of the damage Trump has done to America, the party’s reputation and to chances of winning elections.
These concerns can accumulate and reach a tipping point that fractures one of the most impervious political tribes in American history.
Maybe Republicans have reached that point with the Epstein scandal. It seems to be a kindling of deeper frustrations about Trump and provides a moral and performance basis to challenge Trump’s dominance over the Republican party. Let’s hope.
