Sometimes The Numbers Lie (Because Humans Do Too)

When Donald Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, on August 1, 2025, the media screamed. “Attack on data!” “Authoritarian move!” “Dangerous precedent!”

Maybe.

But let’s also admit something most people in finance whisper behind closed doors: the numbers lie. And they’ve always lied. Because they’re made by people. And people, even the most honest ones, come with something called bias. Sometimes unintentional. Sometimes fully weaponized. But always there.

1. We Don’t Report Reality. We Report What We Want Reality to Be.

Let’s start with human nature. You think the guy compiling CPI data or estimating job creation is a robot? You think politics, pressure, or job security never seep into the spreadsheet?

We all have an incentive to tilt the truth ever so slightly. Ever tried to sell something and omitted some of the key details? That’s human nature. In relationships. In resumes. In reporting.

So it shouldn’t shock anyone that this bias leaks into government statistics. We like to believe these numbers are divine — etched in stone by angels with calculators. But behind every inflation figure, every jobs report, every GDP stat, is a person. And people want to look good. Or make their boss look good. Or, in this case, make their boss look bad.

Trump thinks Erika McEntarfer rigged the job numbers to hurt him. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. But if you think either side is pure in its motives, you’ve never listened to a company spokesman report their company earnings. For example, during the 2008 housing crisis Lehman Brothers conference calls were considered by many to be pure comedy the way the company stretched the truth about their financial strength.

2. Data Smoothing: A Fancy Word for Legal Manipulation

In finance, we even have a name for this behavior: data smoothing.

See, investors hate volatility. They like steady, smooth, upward progress. Hedge fund managers know this. So instead of letting their numbers go up one month and down the next (like actual market behavior), they massage them. Rub out the bumps. Round off the edges.

But it is not legal and you can go to jail for it.

Take Bernie Madoff. The guy never had a bad month. Not one. For decades. His performance charts looked like they were drawn by Michelangelo. Smooth. Consistent. Predictable. And totally fake.

Then there’s Jack Welch — “Neutron Jack” — the man who turned GE into a Wall Street darling. He was the king of beating earnings by a penny. Quarter after quarter, like clockwork. Until people looked closer and realized the numbers were being bent to hit targets. Welch became a case study in how to manipulate corporate metrics just enough to keep the illusion alive.

Madoff went to jail. Welch was discredited after death. But the lesson is eternal: if the incentives are there, the manipulation follows. We assume that in the private sector there are incentives to cheat but why wouldn’t we assume the same with government numbers.

3. The Government Has a Long History of Cooking the Books

Now let’s talk about the real magician act: the U.S. government’s CPI number.

Look at how the U.S inflation numbers are calculated. The “basket of goods” changes all the time. Hedonic adjustments (read: “your TV is better now, so it’s not really more expensive”) are applied liberally. Food and energy — two things you use every day — get excluded from “core” inflation.

Why? Because if the CPI number is lower, the government pays out less in Social Security. Less in military pensions. Less in cost-of-living adjustments. Trillions saved. Just by tweaking assumptions.

So when people say, “Trump’s numbers are fake!” or “Biden’s numbers were rigged!” I just laugh. Of course they’re fake. Not in the tinfoil-hat way. But in the quiet, systemic, built-into-the-models kind of way.

4. We’re Worshiping a Golden Calf of Data

What this entire McEntarfer-Trump drama shows is that we’ve mistaken government data for divine truth. Like the BLS has a pipeline to God and He sends down monthly job reports on golden scrolls.

But they don’t. They send surveys. They revise constantly. They run models with assumptions that can be wrong.

Trump firing McEntarfer may have been politically charged. Maybe it was impulsive. But it also peeled back the curtain on something uncomfortable: government statistics aren’t holy. They’re human.

So let’s stop pretending these numbers are the be-all and end-all.

Conclusion: The System Isn’t Broken. It’s Just Human.

Trump fired a statistician. The media fired back. But all of them — left, right, center — are playing the same game:

Control the numbers. Control the story. Control the people.

Want the truth? You’ll have to dig beneath the surface of every headline, every chart, every “official” release. Not because they’re always lying. But because they can lie. And sometimes, that’s worse.