A broker is seen under the board of the DAX (German stock market index) at Frankfurt's stock exchange September 10, 2001.
Former Treasury Assistant Secretary Aaron Klein warned that President Donald Trump broke dangerous rules by sharing embargoed jobs report data Thursday night on social media.
“This jobs data moves whole markets,” said Klein, speaking on CNN. “You'll see the stock market move because the bond market will move because they're not sure what's going on in terms of the federal reserve. … This data is deeply guarded. It is released at once, released before the markets open at 8:30 in the morning.”
“Very few people have access to this data,” said Klein, a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. “I used to when I worked on Capitol hill, and I was a top staffer. The Joint Economic Committee would hold a hearing on this data, and you'd have to be in a lockup. You'd be in a locked room. … You couldn't have your phone or computer or anything. I'm in the lockup. Right? So, like, that's top-secret stuff that is market moving. That is legal stuff. And, for Trump to throw that on his website is nuts.”
The information that Trump was so eager to release actually preceded additional information revealing a sluggish economy in his first year, despite inheriting vigorous growth from former President Joe Biden.
“Well, look, Trump inherited — that’s been the story of his entire life okay? Trump inherited a strong economy. Then he started messing around with trade. He created a bunch of uncertainty. He moved data around,” said Klein. “… The tariffs on again, off again on again, off again. Maybe so. Maybe not — we don't know. And there's been a lot of movement up and down. But if you look over a whole year now, we have a whole year's worth of jobs data. You find an economy that came in with a lot of momentum and it's slowing and stalling a little bit.”
Klein added that the wealthy at the top of the U.S. market now “control so much of the wealth that they're able to perpetuate the economy” on their own, while the bottom group “is struggling and feeling uncertain.”
