Trump's $20 Billion Firing

 

Tariffs, DOGE cuts, the Iran War, tax cuts for the rich, cuts to affordable health care. We've already seen the costs of the blunders in economic and human terms.  That's not even including the cost of the Malignant Fascist's graft.

But specific consequences of the incompetence of the Malignant Fascist and his clown car of fascist flunkies aren't always known in a timely manner, if they become known at all.  They're often superseded by the daily outrage, or by distractions thrown into the media environment, or simply covered up.  But sometimes when such a consequence becomes public, the sheer, senseless self- sabotaging shocks.  This is one of those instances:

Last year, President Donald Trump took the unprecedented step of ousting Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after alleging economic data was being "rigged" without evidence. Now, research suggests Trump's move packed a punch against the U.S. economy.

A new analysis published ... in the Center for Economic and Policy Research from four economists indicates that the U.S. economy took a $20 billion hit in lost economic activity due to Trump's firing of McEntarfer last August. The analysis attributed the figure to a "sharp increase" in policy uncertainty that depressed economic activity since businesses operating in a cloudy landscape tend to pause investment decisions. 

"The estimate is necessarily imprecise, but the broader implication is clear: trustworthy federal statistics are valuable economic infrastructure," the quartet of economists wrote in the blog post, adding that the finding was "particularly relevant for democracies" managing top-tier statistical agencies to measure economic development.

The analysis was authored by Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economist; Erica Groshen, an ex-BLS commissioner; Duncan Hobbs, a senior research associate at the  American Enterprise Institute; and Michael Strain, another AEI economist.

They applied a statistical model previously used to measure the economic impact of uncertainty during the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic. They calculated the impact to total $20 billion in lost output.

The group argued that preserving independent economic data is critical for the US economic growth since reliable statistics allow consumers and businesses to make their financial decisions with having to fly blind.

"Protecting the credibility, independence, and technical capacity of federal statistical agencies is therefore not merely an administrative concern," they wrote. "It is a consequential economic one."...  (our emphasis)

Twenty billion dollars.  

Now that the illegitimate Republican Supreme Court has ruled that the MF can fire executive branch officials at will for no cause (Trump v Slaughter), who knows what other ill-advised, intemperate firings by the Malignant Fascist will cause significant damage of one sort or another.  He's incompetent, but he's quite proficient at doing damage to our country, isn't he.

(Photo:  Erika McEntarfer, the $20 billion firee / BLS)