President Trump didn't like the jobs numbers, so he fired the person responsible for producing them. It's a move that has been tried before, by leaders of countries from Argentina to Greece to the Soviet Union. It rarely ends well. (Link at end of thread)

Janet Yellen, not a person prone to hyperbole, put it this way: “This is the kind of thing you would only expect to see in a banana republic."

Key point from Andreas Georgiou, who was criminally prosecuted for insisting on reporting accurate deficit figures when he was head of Greece's statistical agency: Reliable data is essential for democracy.

“If society cannot see itself clearly, then it cannot identify its problems," Georgiou said. "If it cannot identify its problems, then it cannot find the right solutions. It cannot find the right persons to solve these problems.”

Much more in the story. (Gift link)

@peterbakernyt And also this from the Nobel laureate economist (and Yellen’s husband) George Akerlof: