'Who are you gonna trust?' Economist warns Trump is poisoning America’s fiscal reputation
An economics expert warned that any forthcoming jobs numbers will leave many questioning their accuracy.
President Donald Trump raged after the Bureau of Labor Statistics published less-than-glowing jobs numbers for July and recalculated the May and June numbers to show meager reports. In response, Trump said he would fire the chair of the BLS and install someone "competent."
Speaking to MSNBC on Friday, Gene Sperling, former director of the National Economic Council, said that no one should underestimate how damaging this can be to assault economic institutions like the BLS.
"I know all this stuff may seem complicated to people, but it's really not. You've got four or five people you could lend money, or invest, to," proposed Sperling. "Four of them often lie, often fudge the numbers, often abuse the law. And one is always honest, independent with monetary policy, independent with the numbers they put out. Who are you going to trust? Who are you going to charge less to lend money?"
He called it the benefit of being a stable economic country.
"And it's not just in the dollar being the reserve currency, not just in our treasuries being the safe haven of investment, but in people believing that the U.S. was a place to make their future and invest," said Sperling.
This is piling on more and more "abuse and attack on the rule of law and economic integrity," he warned. It also comes as Trump extorts law firms, colleges and universities, he added.
Risk Reversal Advisors Principal Dan Nathan told substitute host Stephanie Ruhle that this was the "first time that investors truly began paying attention to some of the funny business that's been going on."
He explained that the job reports are part of a weakness caused by Trump's economic policy.
"If you think about the uncertainty in and around this trade war," he mentioned. "And make no mistake about it, if you start to put these sorts of levies right on some of these countries that you really expected to have deals by now. That sort of uncertainty is going to cause the C-level suite in America to start laying folks off to be a lot more cautious about how they are spending money."
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