Trump follows Argentina in demanding cooked data

But, hey, it’s Trump’s America, and honest, ethical behavior is for those pathetic losers who deserve to be used and exploited. Right?

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump accused a civil servant of sabotaging him without evidence and summarily fired her. In doing so, he stole a page from an emerging market that cycles through inflation surges and debt crises as if it were a national sport. Enter Argentina.

Danish economist Lars Christensen — who has researched emerging economies in Latin America and beyond — dubbed Trump’s outburst as “the Argentinisation of American data.” It’s referring to an instance almost two decades ago in which the Argentine government ousted statistician Graciela Bevacqua. The nonpartisan official had refused to go along with their ploy to doctor inflation figures to shore up the ruling government's odds of triumph in upcoming national elections.

That episode in Argentina’s never-ending economic novella has rippled anew in the U.S. after Trump booted Dr. Erika McEntarfer from helming the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It puts a spotlight on the independent statistics critical to decisions flowing through every level of U.S. society. Diminishing the reliability of such data risks dealing a blow to the U.S. economy that snowballs with unpredictable consequences…

At INDEC, credibility that took generations to build was lost in just a few years. The Economist magazine stopped publishing INDEC’s statistics and labeled them “bogus.” Argentines treated the data as no better than garbage. Investors fumbled in the dark, driving up borrowing costs…

Arturo Porzecanski, a research fellow at American University who has closely tracked Argentina's economy, said its society is still paying the costs from a near-decade of financial blindness: Citizens, businesses, and investors alike. - Quartz