U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has disbanded two expert committees that worked with the government to produce economic statistics, potentially affecting the quality of data.

The terminations by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick were effective February 28 and communicated on Tuesday via email to one of the panels, the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee (FESAC), which assisted with inflation and employment gross domestic product (GDP) data.

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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    2 hours ago

    Not an accelerationist but this will allow them to go faster while breaking things and even they won’t know if they’re about to hit a tree. The only indicator would be the screams of the working class, which bodes well for a regime change.

  • venotic@kbin.melroy.org
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    4 hours ago

    What I really hate about this administration, is by dismantling data and statistics, we’re going to have 4 years where it’ll feel like it’s just one big black blotch. We won’t know where things have been, where they are by any basis because this uneducated fucking moron who titles himself president has fundamentally fucked with it.

  • tal@lemmy.today
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    13 hours ago

    The disbanding comes days after Lutnick said he would strip government spending from the GDP report, a move some economists said was impossible and intended to obscure the economic impact of deep spending cuts and mass layoffs being pursued by tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

    “When you go down that rabbit hole, it’s like trying to unscramble the eggs,” said Brian Bethune, an Economics professor at Boston College. “For example, a lot of the defense spending goes to private contractors. So how can you cut that out of GDP? It’s a ridiculous idea.”

    If you want fabricated numbers to make your policies look good, you’re also going to dick up things for companies and institutions who use those numbers for planning.