Ed Elson

All right.

Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody's Analytics.

Mark, always love having you.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Another month, another inflation report, and for the second time, the numbers are wrong.

Now, if you listen to the show a lot, you know that I hate when people make this argument.

When the data comes out and someone on the left or the right says, no, no, you can't trust the number.

The number's wrong because the people who report those numbers, the people at the BLS, they're lying.

I hate this argument because it is a lazy argument, and it's almost never true.

The people at the BLS are not lying.

As we've discussed before, if there's any reason why the numbers are wrong, it's that there was an actual data problem.

Some irregularity in the survey, some problem in the reporting that made the numbers flawed.

And if that is the case...

well, it's important then that you show me your evidence.

Show me why you believe in this very bold claim that the US government's data is incorrect.

In other words, this is no small statement.

And yet, in this case, it is actually true.

And it all goes back once again to that stupid month of October when the government shut down all of its operations, including its ability to go out and measure prices, which means they literally didn't collect the data.

And more importantly, they didn't adjust for that data.