Thanks to Paul Krugman for citing my brief paper on EJ Antoni’s 2022 recession claim, in “Hackification”, all in the cause of exposing the abuses of data now taking place.

Krugman quotes

Hannah Arendt:

Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.

Let me call this Arendt’s Law: Totalitarian and wannabe totalitarian regimes only hire incompetent hacks.

So when Trump nominated E.J. Antoni, the current chief economist at Heritage, to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it seemed safe to assume that he would be cut from the same cloth. But although Trump’s Truth Social post announcing the nomination declared that Antoni is a Highly Respected Economist, I and most of the economists I talk with knew nothing about him.

….

… An economist who gets