Comment: If recession hits, will Republicans acknowledge it? [View all]

By Kathryn Anne Edwards / Bloomberg Opinion

The internet has been quick to dig into the professional history of E.J. Antoni, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It doesn’t take long.

Currently the chief economist for the Heritage Foundation, he got his doctorate just five years ago and has no publications or citations of note. He has no experience with large public surveys, no research about survey methodology, and no history of managing large organizations such as the 2,000 people who work at the BLS. Unusually for an economist, he appears not to have a strong grasp of how recessions work.

Ultimately, however, Antoni himself is uninteresting. He’s just another unqualified Trump nominee. His nomination is worth paying attention to, however, because it illustrates the twin perils facing the economy: the coming slowdown, and a party that refuses to acknowledge it.

If anyone needed further proof of that slowdown, it came in the jobs numbers that got the last BLS commissioner fired. The U.S. economy added an average of just 35,000 jobs over the last three months. This came on the heels of a gross domestic prodcut report that showed both household spending and business investment growing at half the pace of last year. Meanwhile, prices are still rising above the target rate of 2%.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-if-recession-hits-will-republicans-acknowledge-it/

They'll just call it fake news and hope we believe them.