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.
TREASURY SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Let's start with Chair Powell. President Trump has said that he's not going to fire Chair Powell. President Trump has a great reverence for the institution of the Federal Reserve. And, you know, as I said, he likes to work...
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
A FIVE Sigma mistake? That means the data have a 1 in 1.7 MILLION chance of being correct!
Was that attention grabbling hyperbole?
Scott Bessent does not appear to have the resume' of an incompetent liar.
Maybe he’s been studying at the Donald Trump School of Hyperbole?
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
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).
It should be easy to prove that it’s hyberbole. The data is out there.
Cooking the books at five sigma would surely be noticed. Even a one sigma miss would be noticeable.
Glad bessent is on our side. He knows all the tricks of the trade
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.
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.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4333667/posts?page=11#11
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.
There goes his credibility.
Doesn’t that mean about 99.99% of the data is incorrect?
Any one citing standard deviations is ok in my book!
About that, yes. That’s why I think it’s hyperbolic exaggeration.
Is this why Trump fired the woman at the BLS?
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.
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.
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