Why Now?
This is from Seeking Alpha
“The Biden administration has shortened the waiting period for White House officials to weigh in on economic releases – including GDP, inflation and jobs data – to 30 minutes from one hour, starting Monday.”
“This change reduces the delay after official release time before commentary from employees of the Executive Branch, while retaining a necessary time delay between policy-neutral release of statistics and subsequent Executive Branch interpretations,” said the Office of Management and Budget. A major reason behind changing the “gag period” is that data can now be widely accessed instantly through the internet, although concerns have been raised over the potential for market confusion and data manipulation.”
On the surface seems like a nothing burger. What is the need to shorten from one hour to 30 minutes the time before an economic release and when the spin masters from the administration can comment? Two reasons. The numbers are about to get much worse(to the point where their lying and fudging can no longer change the narrative as it has for the last two years) and because of the coming election where they have to spin the narrative even more than usual.
So now the algo reactions to ‘corrections’ like LYFT had a few days ago might be even more intense – my guess is this half hour rule change could contribute to volatility. The quicker we can react to our intake of .gov lies the better, right? The inevitable (truthier) adjustments will come later.