Certainly not inherently but this is 🍌🍌
“Mr. Davis said that the jump in legal services prices in the C.P.I. data — and the absence of a clear reason for such a big increase — made that the right decision.”
So the job of a BEA statistician is to decide what is a reasonable price increase??
Ad hoc opaque decisions by BEA/BLS are termites eating at confidence in US data…
“We are moving to more of a vague, uncertain, cloudy data quality environment that is going to make market participants less confident” said @courtneyshupert.bsky.social
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/b...
Great! They should know it is being noticed. The more the better.
That is a reasonable concern, but there are plenty of noisy sources ripe for improvement, that is what the annual benchmark process is all about. Changing things in an ad hoc way with no disclosure is the real news here, and decidedly not how they used to make decisions
Our response to their response:
no it is not
Exactly! So we emailed and got this response. They have been using the source data despite it not meeting CPI publication standards for years but suddenly shifted when there was a large gain. A shift in source data would typically be done as part of an annual revision and disclosed ahead of time:
Troubling development--Core PCE inflation was hot in Jan at 0.36% m/m & 3.1% y/y BUT it would have been even hotter had BEA not shifted its source data in an ad hoc fashion to avoid showing an 11.9% m/m rise in legal fees shown in the CPI. The BEA acknowledged they made this choice...not a good look
HONDA SHARES FALL MORE THAN 5% AFTER ANNUAL LOSS GUIDANCE
America's status as the top destination for global talent is being shattered.
The Administration only just published (!) what happened last summer to international student visa issuances. It's grim.
From the indispensable @karinfischer.bsky.social @chronicle.com —> chronicle.com/newsletter/l...
We close our survey tonight, it is crazy out there but we value your views
survey.alchemer.com/s3/8734805/M...
@claudia-sahm.bsky.social @skandaamarnath.bsky.social @peark.es @econberger.bsky.social @chriswheeler.bsky.social @conorsen.bsky.social @econparker.bsky.social @gregdaco.bsky.social
Sable Offshore Corp...there's always a grift
A significant divergence in inflation metrics is opening up w/ core PCE inflation firming but core CPI gradually moderating reflecting broader measures of health care in PCE & differing weights/sources. The diffusion index of prices rising vs falling confirms something broader than tariffs at play
Our Q1 Shadow Survey of Market Participants is in the field! How much will oil prices boost inflation? What will the Fed do? What do you expect from a Chair Warsh? Take a few minutes to share your views and you will get the complete results. Link to survey here:
survey.alchemer.com/s3/8734805/M...
There have been undercurrents of protest to his *very respected* status that have grown and broadened over many years--we knew he appeared in Eptein's flight logs as early as 2021 and of course he demonstrated his misogyny very publicly at Harvard. But I too am positively surprised!
But you see you are using apple pay to transfer...national currency that is backed by the full faith and credit of a govt
Quality adjustment in smartphones/watches weighed on goods inflation even as apparel popped--what are people feeling IRL?
I protested my software provider’s 12.5% price increase and they said “that as a "Thank You" for your continued loyalty, we have added advanced marketing features and new AI capabilities to your plan.”
They gave me services I didn’t ask for & raised my price, they will not be my provider for long
*Thom Tillis refuses to budge on blocking Fed chair pick Kevin Warsh confirmation
No amount of meetings and KW charm alters the impasse since it is not about KW but the political bullying of the Fed. The DOJ must drop the investigation into the Fed's building renovation. Period.
He allegedly said "he needed help transferring data from a thumb drive “to his personal computer so that he could ‘sanitize’ the data before using it at [the company.] ... [and] that he expected to receive a presidential pardon ... ." www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
indeed--"so far" is a key qualifier
Sunday was the high water mark for the year in the economic policy uncertainty index, highest since last June. Uncertainty does not map cleanly into eoncomic measures, but in a more general sense it makes it harder to make hiring/investment/spending decisions
"Decentralised infrastructures come with a built-in tendency toward fragmentation that works against the very network effects that give money its social value..."
AI is supposed to result in a productivity boom yet ALL my software providers are raising their prices by 10% or more...
To give you a sense of how big a deal this is: Summers’ PhD advisor made NBER what it is today
RT @WBCBaseball: GRAND SLAM
Fernando Tatis Jr. has entered the chat in a BIG way! #WorldBaseballClassic
Our Q1 Shadow Survey of Market Participants is in the field! How much will oil prices boost inflation? What will the Fed do? What do you expect from a Chair Warsh? Take a few minutes to share your views and you will get the complete results. Link to survey here:
survey.alchemer.com/s3/8734805/M...
