In today’s live session, we walked through a bizarre moment in the news cycle: two CNBC articles published side-by-side that tell completely different stories about the U.S. economy. One claims wholesale prices and inflation are cooling. The other shows Americans cutting back on Black Friday spending and stretching every dollar to survive. Both can’t be true — and that disconnect launched us into a deeper discussion about whether the Bureau of Labor Statistics is publishing data that matches lived reality.
Using everything from car-leasing nightmares to Thanksgiving grocery inflation, we explored why everyday economic pain doesn’t square with the “positive” numbers coming out of the Trump administration’s BLS. After firing the former BLS commissioner and trying to install loyalists, Trump opened the door to politicizing economic reporting — and the numbers now seem just “believable” enough to be misinformation rather than outright fiction.
We also talked about tariff-driven price spikes, consumer anxiety, and why misinformation in economic data is uniquely dangerous in an already unstable environment. If someone competent — not just loyal — is massaging the numbers, the public and even economists could be flying blind heading into a potential economic shock.
A chaotic live, technical issues and all — but an important conversation.
