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Trump refuses to share pre-holiday inflation report — first skipped month in 12 years (www.rawstory.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/Finance@lemmy.sdf.org
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The federal agency will skip the postponed October report on the Producer Price Index and instead roll those figures into November's report, which will be published Jan. 14, reported the Wall Street Journal.

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[–] 26 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Withholding government reports or cooking them to make them more palpable is what we in the USA have accused China of for years.

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  • [–] -1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

    we've been cooking the numbers for years, witholding them is just to finally pop this bubble

    dems ratfuck and build the bubble, take a couple carefully chosen social steps forward while ignoring basic growing wealth-gap/QoL shit leading to growing general disillusionment, lose to republicans after purposefully sabotaging themselves, republicans ratfuck more, pop the bubble, take a society couple steps back, dems win after, repeat

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    we’ve been cooking the numbers for years

    Can you point to an example I can look at?

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (1 child)

    the dozen different times they've changed the inflation metrics to remove/reduce the effect of various "volatile" things that were...becoming to expensive...like food, and housing.

    and that's before you throw in shit like federal/state subsidies which are used to directly and artificially manipulate the price of goods for consumers, like for gas. americans hate paying more than 4$/gallon for gas, but they effectively pay alot more when consider all the subsidies

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

    the dozen different times they’ve changed the inflation metrics to remove/reduce the effect of various “volatile” things that were…becoming to expensive…like food, and housing.

    That sounds like you're describing the Consumer Price Index and the changes made to it over time. Those changes make sense to me because at one time the money you'd spend on internet access wasn't included because the items included predate the internet. Once it was accepted that internet is something everyone needs, they changed the metric to include it. Further, all of this is published in the open. You can read all the docs where the decisions were made and when the new metric is reflected in the data.

    The changes made to the CPI haven't "remove/reduce"'d the measured inflation number, they've actually increased the measured inflation, which I think we both agree is a more accurate assessment of what American consumers are facing.

    This doesn't compare to China in the past or what trump is doing now where they are simply faking numbers or withholding reports altogether.

    and that’s before you throw in shit like federal/state subsidies which are used to directly and artificially manipulate the price of goods for consumers, like for gas. americans hate paying more than 4$/gallon for gas, but they effectively pay alot more when consider all the subsidies

    That's a much larger conversation that isn't aimed at lying to people or withholding data. Yes, there is a political component where consumers don't like to pay more for gas, but even that isn't the main driver. The main driver is businesses need predictable prices and much of what the US Government (historically) does is making things predictable, not cheap, but predictable. With trump most of this is out the window and he's breaking rules and screwing up the stable predictable environment businesses want and need.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago*

    I'm not sure anyone's been "cooking the books" on inflation. There's ample open source data. Would be pretty hard to cover it up, even if the government isn't releasing their own figures.

    That being said, they can distort things like unemployment figures by discounting under employment or people who have given up searching.

    As for fiscal irresponsibility, both parties are guilty. But at the same time, of the two parties, the Democrats are more fiscally responsible. It's a tired myth that this is not the case but Republicans are a "cut taxes and spend" party. And usually the way they spend is giving more money to the rich while shifting cost burdens to the working class. But since the USD is the global reserve currency, it's actually impossible for the US to not rack up debt.

    That being said, debt isn't actually the real problem. The problem is under investment in industries that actually lead to future growth and enable prosperity in the 65th percentile, as opposed to a system that just allows rich people to siphon money from the economy and then tax shelter it. Which is our current system. But I use the term "industries" loosely. I'm not talking about kickbacks for corporations. I'm talking about we need subsidized healthcare and education; we need to invest in more efficient, resilient, and sustainable infrastructure; we need to invest in the industries of the future rather than continuing to subsidize the industries of yesterday.

    The US does have a problem of a two party duopoly. And both parties are just the capitalist party, where the Democrats are the moderate wing and the Republicans are the far right wing. Democrats are not a left wing party, nor do they serve the interests of the working class. It's neither through incompetence or indecision that they repeatedly fail to deliver necessary reforms that would actually help the bottom 90%. But then, that goes doubly so for the Republicans. We have to abolish the two party duopoly and get money out of politics. That would be a good start.

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    • [–] 14 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    The Covid Approach: no reports, no problem!

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    • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Gee I wonder why? Maybe because he's tanked the economy and everything fucking sucks?

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    • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    What happened in 2013 to delay that report? This seems really sketchy and I'm not a trump fan, just curious...

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (1 child)

    Yeah, that's the real question. This isn't even the weirdest thing Trump has done this week.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    Best response I got so far was in 2013 there was also a government shutdown also back in August Trump claimed the numbers in the job report were "lies".

    As I said in another comment Trump sucks so much this is like #2574 of things to mock him for.

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    • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    Wonder how business leaders, particularly in retail, are taking this. How are you to navigate your current and future business needs without data?

    I feel like, pre-Trump, government denial like this would shake the stock market. The government is saying, "Shit's so bad, we're deliberately hiding it."

    And even if the government isn't holding back the data, really is struggling to catch up after the shutdown, that's maybe worse! "This government is such a shit how we can't handle our basic duties."

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    [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

    Expect more of this as, economically, what he threw up must come back down.

    Edit: In the air.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Dogs eat their own throw up, its very economical.

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    • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Anybody want to take odds on the November report release getting pushed?

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    [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    It's gonna get worse before it gets better.

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    12 comments in c/economy@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 31 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    There’s no inflation if you ignore the figures. Therefore, there’s no president if you ignore the president.

    Bingo!

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    I mean inflation itself as a formula has been constantly tinkered with to make it look nicer, excluding extreme changes (unless they beneficially contribute to under-representing the actual inflation).

    For example, inflation was supposed to be on average 4-5% YoY for the past ~5 years here in the UK, yet somehow everything that matters - food, bills, rent, etc. - went up by 50-70% if not more in that period.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I mean 5% inflation is a pretty high rate. At 5% YoY you'd have prices up ~30% in 5 years.

    If that rate is uneven (lower/higher across different segments of the purchasing basket) you could get towards 50% inflation in some areas.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I said average - and that average was offset by the fact that during COVID (which does fall into the "past 5 years" period), inflation was pretty high "on paper" at 12% (at the time it felt much closer to 30-40%).

    Recent years had "okay" inflation of 2-4%.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago*

    This is kind of weirdly true since so much about the economy is based on sentiment. Inflation is obviously real, but purchasing power is pretty nebulous.

    But obviously ignoring it entirely is not even close to sustainable.

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    • [–] 17 points 11 months ago

    There are no cases if you stop testing! /s

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    [–] 16 points 11 months ago

    Well duh it's because there's no inflation!
    /s

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    [–] 15 points 11 months ago

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    [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    Pfft. No need for numbers. Trump has lowered inflation by 17000%. He is a god and a genius. Oh, and a pedophile.

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    [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    The most transparent presidency ever!

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    [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    Because the numbers are through the roof. And he's called all major retailers to make sure they aren't releasing their sales reports either. Top retailers are in full panic. Christmas sales are historically low.

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    4 comments in c/usa@midwest.social view that post
    [–] 11 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Oh it's going to be BAD isn't it..

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    The numbers are fantastic! All you have to do is pull up the report, then close one eye, then close the other eye, bury your head in the sand and wait for a lion to bring you the sweet release of death

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