The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) issues a report every month listing the employment statistics of the previous month. These reports are extremely valuable to financial analysts, especially now that the unemployment rate is almost double what it was under the Bush administration. Stocks rise and fall on these numbers, money is made or lost, jobs are created or destroyed.
Because of the intense seriousness of these numbers and their importance to traders, the BLS embargoes these reports until scheduled report dates. That means that no one outside of the BLS working team is allowed to see the report and that they are not allowed to share the data in the report with anyone — until the date, hour, and minute of the official report release. This keeps the playing field fair and level for all market participants.
President Obama apparently does not feel that fair-market restrictions should apply to him. Speaking in Pittsburgh on Wednesday he stated “We expect to see strong jobs growth in Friday’s report.”
This statement has only three possible explanations:
- President Obama has seen the May jobs report and is unethically (and possibly illegally) leaking data from that report.
- President Obama hasn’t seen the report and is just making things up as he goes along — effectively misleading his listeners.
- President Obama has ordered the BLS to produce a positive job report. Unlikely, but not unthinkable.
If Obama was merely was merely making up a story to impress his audience, he has one good reason to believe that his optimistic forecast is correct. The May numbers will include a huge number of temporary employees that the Federal government has hired to take the 2010 census. Moreover, the Census Bureau has been caught engaging in fraud in order to justify hiring more temporary workers than were necessary. The Obama administration has effectively turned the Census Bureau into a modern-day version of FDR’s Work Project Administration (WPA) in an attempt to “cook the books” on unemployment.
If Obama has seen the report and leaked it’s contents publicly, it must cause one to wonder what information he has leaked to campaign contributors privately. We already know that the Obama Administration has refused to make the White House visitor list public — preventing the American public from knowing who he is talking to or what information he is leaking. More important than financial data which can be used for illegal stock market manipulation is the thought that a person who cannot keep important secrets has access to national security information, which puts the lives of American service members at risk.
