DATA DISASTER

On Sunday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick proposed separating government spending, 23.3% of GDP including Social Security, Medicare, defense, and more from GDP reports. This proposition is best avoided. Once data quality is compromised, faith in other data will be impugned, investors who finance our debt will withdraw, raising interest rates, and policy makers will be ignorant of the true situation. This is what China does; no one trusts their data.