{"id":194137,"date":"2025-12-21T00:52:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T00:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/194137\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T00:52:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T00:52:24","slug":"economists-warn-of-distorted-inflation-data-as-white-house-touts-new-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/194137\/","title":{"rendered":"Economists warn of distorted inflation data as White House touts new report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Economists are warning that Thursday\u2019s inflation report could end up being less instructive than usual after the government shutdown hamstrung data collection. <\/p>\n<p>One example: The Labor Department decided to estimate <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/fcastofthemonth\/status\/2001674526862819660?s=20\" class=\"styles_linkEmbed__SNmaX\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">October housing costs<\/a> as static, likely making overall inflation in the report appear cooler than it really is. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe November inflation report was like the data-nerd equivalent of the emperor-with-no-clothes story: We didn\u2019t have basically any October data and limited November data,\u201d Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, told Semafor. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t look at this and see anything nefarious; I don\u2019t see anything political. \u2026 But the actual read, the number, is probably not 100% accurate.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>That didn\u2019t stop the White House from touting the report as proof of \u201ca historic economic boom,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/PressSec\/status\/2001671129803448490?s=20\" class=\"styles_linkEmbed__SNmaX\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">as press secretary Karoline Leavitt put it<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>President Donald Trump is slated to visit North Carolina today as his administration seeks to reassure voters concerned about affordability.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Economists are warning that Thursday\u2019s inflation report could end up being less instructive than usual after the government&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-194137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}