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Bessent: How Can The Fed Set Rates When Jobs Data Is This Broken? "This Was A Five Standard Deviation Mistake"
Real Clear Politics ^ | Date August 7, 2025 | Tim Hains

Posted on 08/09/2025 4:06:32 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum

Back to Videos Bessent: How Can The Fed Set Rates When Jobs Data Is This Broken? "This Was A Five Standard Deviation Mistake" Posted By Tim Hains On Date August 7, 2025 Treasury Secretary Bessent defended President Trump's decision to fire Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) head Erika McEntarfer after unprecedented downward revisions to May and June jobs figures published in July.

"The mistake that they made last week was a five to six standard deviation mistake," Bessent told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Thursday. "There’s something wrong here. Because on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve voted not to cut rates. On Friday, the BLS had this massive downward revision. One of these is mistaken. So either the Fed economists did not see what the BLS did, or the BLS data was corrupted."

"There’s something wrong here. Because on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve voted not to cut rates. On Friday, the BLS had this massive downward revision. One of these is mistaken. So either the Fed economists did not see what the BLS did, or the BLS data was corrupted."

"We have settled for so much mediocrity across the government," Bessent said. "If the employers aren’t providing this, then it was incumbent on the BLS to find a new way of collecting data. It just strikes me as very lazy work—trying to do things the same old way and expect a different result."

"I think the replacement is going to be a highly competent statistician or labor economist who won't have errors of this magnitude," he said.


(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government
KEYWORDS: bubbles; corruption; data; easymoney; economy; zirp
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1 posted on 08/09/2025 4:06:32 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

A FIVE Sigma mistake? That means the data have a 1 in 1.7 MILLION chance of being correct!

Was that attention grabbling hyperbole?


2 posted on 08/09/2025 4:17:18 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: ProtectOurFreedom
Was that attention grabbling hyperbole?

Scott Bessent does not appear to have the resume' of an incompetent liar.


3 posted on 08/09/2025 4:25:19 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Democrats are the Party of racism, anger, hate and violence.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Maybe he’s been studying at the Donald Trump School of Hyperbole?


4 posted on 08/09/2025 4:31:58 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Interest rates should be set by the market. Perception of risk and return by the lender and the borrower should be the determining Factor

Establishment of a central bank, i.e. The Federal Reserve, was the nail in the coffin of the Republic

The Republic of the United States of America ceased to exist in 1913


5 posted on 08/09/2025 4:32:06 PM PDT by ChildOfThe60s (If you can remember the 60s, you weren't really there)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom; All
Was that attention grabbling hyperbole?

Yes. Also Bessent needs to get his story straight...on one had he says the BLS employment stats are BS (job creation too low)..."job creation/economy is strong"...which means he promoting stable/higher interest rates, then he says interest rates should be a lot lower which indicates a poor job market/economy. Pick one. Also, eliminate the Fed's "jobs mandate" just let them match the money supply to population growth with NO monetizing the national debt (buying treasures with fake printed money).

6 posted on 08/09/2025 4:32:38 PM PDT by Drago
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

It should be easy to prove that it’s hyberbole. The data is out there.


7 posted on 08/09/2025 4:34:35 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Democrats are the Party of racism, anger, hate and violence.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Cooking the books at five sigma would surely be noticed. Even a one sigma miss would be noticeable.


8 posted on 08/09/2025 4:36:27 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: E. Pluribus Unum; bitt; little jeremiah

Glad bessent is on our side. He knows all the tricks of the trade


9 posted on 08/09/2025 4:40:39 PM PDT by thinden (Buckle Up!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Get rid of both the Fed and the BLS. They’ve both become tools of our oligarchy and are too corrupted to bother with anymore.


10 posted on 08/09/2025 4:51:32 PM PDT by jimwatx
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Did the math and posted it before

The 2024 annual revision ahowed that the actual final estimate for nonfarm payrolls was 20% below the original estimate.

That is a shocking miss and the analogy of landing in Denver is roughly correct.

(Although landing in Cleveland or Detroit would have been more apt)

Plus the other problem is if the initial estimates were being processed properly half the time, half of the months it would be an upward revision and half the months it would be downward

My personal review showed that the vast majority of the revisions were downward revisions

Put another way, in some fundamental fashion the initial estimates are almost always too high. This points to a fundamental flaw in the methodology.

And Bessent is correct that some of the nonfarm payroll job totals used to have 100% actual numbers in there. Now it’s 30% and they’re literally guessing on the rest.


11 posted on 08/09/2025 4:54:29 PM PDT by Old West Conservative
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To: ProtectOurFreedom; Old West Conservative
Cooking the books at five sigma would surely be noticed. Even a one sigma miss would be noticeable.

https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4333667/posts?page=11#11

12 posted on 08/09/2025 4:59:47 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Democrats are the Party of racism, anger, hate and violence.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

The nice think about knowing a list of left wing sites that have proven to be unreliable (this being one of them) saves me the time of reading their childish prognostications. I did note (with a smile) their use of “five standard deviation”in the lede. Uh-huh.


13 posted on 08/09/2025 5:02:53 PM PDT by Da Coyote
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

There goes his credibility.


14 posted on 08/09/2025 5:29:23 PM PDT by aquila48 (Do not let them make you "care" ! Guilting you is how they. control you. )
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Doesn’t that mean about 99.99% of the data is incorrect?


15 posted on 08/09/2025 5:35:13 PM PDT by Tom Tetroxide (Psalm 146:3 "Do not trust in princes, in the Son of Man, who has no salvation.")
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Any one citing standard deviations is ok in my book!


16 posted on 08/09/2025 5:50:05 PM PDT by llevrok (Keep buggering on!)
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To: Tom Tetroxide

About that, yes. That’s why I think it’s hyperbolic exaggeration.


17 posted on 08/09/2025 5:50:38 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Is this why Trump fired the woman at the BLS?


18 posted on 08/09/2025 7:20:02 PM PDT by know.your.why
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Democrats dont know how to govern. They are central economic control freaks, who think that they can just rates, like a five-year planner and the economy will respond like they want.


19 posted on 08/09/2025 7:25:40 PM PDT by Jonty30 (If you put some water in your gas tank, with your gas, the gas will stay in the tank longer.)
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To: Jonty30

Just like they think they can wave a magic wand and upset 140 years of central station power generation, transmission and distribution with their “green” energy wet dreams.


20 posted on 08/09/2025 9:26:06 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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