White House officials on Sunday defended President Trump’s decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) following a weak jobs report, a move that has sparked broad criticism. “The president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers,

Investors have long parsed economic reports on the labor market or inflation to help determine prices for stocks and bonds. But after weak jobs data on Friday prompted President Trump to fire Erika McEntarfer, the top Bureau of Labor Statistics official, the sacrosanct importance of U.S. government data to investors suddenly came into doubt.

President Donald Trump said he will announce a new Federal Reserve governor and a new jobs data statistician in the coming days, two appointments that may shape his economic agenda amid anxiety over the trajectory of global growth.

This is what the alarmists — the people who have worried that President Trump may seek to undermine the collection of economic data — feared. The big picture: The president's abrupt firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Friday makes clear that any federal data collector who delivers unwelcome news could lose their job in an instant.