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Caracas on the Potomac

Goodbye, reliable economic data

If stagflation breaks out under an authoritarian regime, but officials aren’t allowed to report the numbers, did it make a sound? And it was presumably especially disturbing for Trump and those around him, who have been boasting about how hot the economy is and sneering at critics pointing to the harm being done by chaotic policy. So there was only one thing to do: Trump summarily fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, accusing her without evidence of manipulating the numbers for political purposes.

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