Posted on 08/10/2025 8:30:53 AM PDT by karpov
Government statistician Graciela Bevacqua arrived at the office on a Monday to bad news from her boss: There was no easy way to say this, but the president wanted her head.
It was January 2007, and Bevacqua oversaw the consumer-price index at Argentina’s national statistics agency, Indec. Rising inflation threatened the electoral hopes of leftist President Néstor Kirchner’s wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was running to succeed him. Bevacqua was unwilling to fudge the numbers, so Kirchner replaced her with a loyalist who did it.
Echoes of the Argentine saga have reverberated in the U.S. since President Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, on Aug. 1 after big downward revisions to jobs data. He accused the bureau of rigging the data to make Republicans look bad but provided no evidence, and independent economists dismissed the allegation.
“This is the sort of thing only the worst populists do in the worst emerging economies,” economist Phil Suttle said of McEntarfer’s dismissal in a note to clients.
Although Argentina is an emerging economy, its statistics agency was regarded as professional and independent, and governed by a solid legal framework. That makes its experience a useful lesson in what awaits the U.S. if new leadership politicizes economic data.
Following Bevacqua’s removal, Argentina’s officially reported inflation rate fell to 8.5% in 2007 from 9.8% in 2006. Fernández de Kirchner easily won the election, and the government initially saved billions of dollars in interest on inflation-linked bonds which could be spent on social programs and subsidies.
In reality, inflation had accelerated to around 25%, private economists estimated. The government faced lawsuits from unions and pensioners whose social-security checks were indexed to inflation.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Any WSJ comment on MONTHLY revision downward of numbers during Dem administrations?
The WSJ, CNBC, and other MSM outlets are all saying “How can we possibly believe the economic data when the responsible officer is a Trump appointee?”
Of course, when the responsible officer was appointed by Biden or any other Democrat, the data could NEVER have been politically tainted, and its accuracy was unquestionable.
Trump / MAGA are busy dismantling the organs of the deep state
Besides health care, which is presently being ignored by Trump (and has become a bloated, destructive political mess) the next thing MAGA must do is make America’s statistics REAL again.
Every important Fed.gov statistic has been corrupted and subject to political propaganda - from inflation, to unemployment, to FBI violent crime stats, to rent/housing, to vaccine harm.
Our stats are approaching Soviet-style corruption.
Ain't that the truth...
Biden’s phony baloney economic numbers did not save the Democrats.
Any human with an IQ above room temperature knew they were a pack of lies.
Lying to people crushed by inflation is a double insult—and deserves the middle finger in return.
Both the Fed and major banks do tend to have somewhat independent assessments of inflation or payrolls.
This is how one gets the “expected” number on economics calendars. The official number losing credibility would not hit too very hard
Except
The CPI does determine Soc Sec and other monthly check adjustments. And payraises at companies are often similarly tied.
The WSJ is turning into leftist DNC trash.
is or has?
FDR got away with it all the way up until the Battle of Midway. The media was on his side too.
Like a lot of things, once you understand how some of these reports are created you will question EVERYTHING that comes out of the BLS.
When I was a young pup (1983) for some reason the BLS surveyor got my phone number for their monthly call. I was a call center supervisor. Every month I would get the call to see if we had added any staff or let anyone go. I asked our HR department what I should do. They said to just make it up. So I did. I knew generally if we were growing or not…so I gave it my best shot.
So, from 1983-1984 the numbers for Western MA were not really accurate. I figure we represented a county for our “category.”
The process hasn’t changed all that much.
The process for the household survey is even worse.
If we built the process from the ground up, it would involve actual payroll data. Like the ADP reports.
Typical WSJ claptrap...
I still hoped they had some level headed practical people there, but not so sure now. Business and financial media has certainly been infiltrated by the lefty wokeness; for example Business Insider is a total POS.
The unspoken assumption of this article is that BLS stats were perfect and utterly non-political until the last couple of weeks.
They should prove that assertion before writing patronizing articles about the new BLS.
“Echoes of the Argentine saga have reverberated in the U.S. since President Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics”
Except that in Argentina the firing was for refusing to falsify numbers, whereas in America, the firing was because of falsifying the numbers.
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