“I am pleased to announce that I am nominating Highly Respected Economist, Dr. E.J. Antoni, as the next Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE. I know E.J. Antoni will do an incredible job in this new role. Congratulations E.J.!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The announcement immediately incensed the internet.
Craig Shapiro, a macro-economics strategist, warned on X, “Conspiracy theory: CPI will come in hot tomorrow and Trump will say it was fake news and thankfully he now has the guy in there to fix the data.”
The popular Republicans against Trump account wrote on X, “Next jobs report is going to be HUGE.”
Jeremy Horpedahl, an associate professor at the University of Central Arkansas, warned on X ahead of the announcement, “This is a terrible idea. Antoni either massively misunderstands labor market data, or he is willing to lie repeatedly about after being corrected by dozens of economists Quote Brian Schwartz.”
Spencer Hakimian, founder of Tolou Capital Management, wrote on X, “Lmao get ready for a +27 million job month in 2 weeks.”
Matthew Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters, wrote on X: “The morning Trump fired the BLS commissioner, Antoni was on Steve Bannon’s show explaining that the lack of a ‘MAGA Republican’ in the post was ‘why we continue to have all these data problems.'”
Brendan Duke, senior director of Federal Budget Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote on X that “Antoni has distinguished himself with his lack of shame in producing viral dishonest analyses that have been criticized by honest conservative analysts. If he brings that lack of shame to the production official economic statistics, their reliability could be in question.”
Rob Bon Vivant, a former senior corporate communications executive, noted on X, “Antoni took the job as Chief Economist for the Heritage Foundation in May. So another Trump lackey to lie and politicize critical, independent economic data.”
And Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias wrote on X, “Antoni’s commentary on economic data over the past few years has been some of the absolute worst around. For the sake of the country I hope this guy is a huge liar and his various statements don’t reflect sincere incompetence.”
“If he brings that lack of shame to the production official economic statistics, their reliability could be in question.”
Oh, not just ‘could be’.
Make that ‘will certainly be’.
They will be meaningless and worthless, for what happens next, refer to Argentina and Turkiye economic history.
It has been a very dark day. With the federal takeover of DC, Trump calling Alaska “Russia”, and this, it seems things are going downhill for this country very quickly. I think if what we’re suspecting Trump’s intentions with Alaska are true though, it will be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I had a discussion with ChatGPT a while back about alternative sources for US economic information if the BLS became unreliable. The answer was YES. We talked about setting up a specialized AI that could collate information from many sources and look for inconsistencies in the results. This seems to be something that could be done relatively easily by an AI, and it could be something that investors and economists will be doing (or have already done). With some very clever AI’s out there, Dr. Antoni will have to walk the bed of coals if she tries to twist the data to her boss’s advantage.
https://chatgpt.com/share/689aa46d-73f8-8013-b9e6-01644e4cbe31
(this takes a while to read and gets quite detailed)