Opinion Today

This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, the highly reliable, accurate and transparent data on the health of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. Sign up here.

Today’s Agenda

Labor logic leaves the room.
What’s behind butter’s price boom?
Flying with a side of doom.
Insurance is a source of gloom.

Beautiful Statistics

Imagine checking the weather report and seeing there’s a 70% chance of rain tomorrow. Instead of, I dunno, bringing an umbrella to work, you decide to fire the meteorologist because you wanted a beautiful, sunny day.

To state the obvious: That is not how life works! You can’t shoot the messenger just because the news is bad. And yet President Donald Trump went ahead and ordered the Bureau of Labor Statistics chief to be fired after the monthly jobs report failed to show a BOOMING economy after his beautiful tariffs.

If a $30 trillion economy weren’t hanging in the balance, you might laugh at the absurdity of Trump turning the BLS into the BBS — Bureau of Beautiful Statistics. But Kathryn Anne Edwards is not at all amused by Trump’s apparent dismissal of Dr. Erika McEntarfer, who has been praised for her “bipartisan” mindset. Nor is former BLS chief William Beach, who called the removal of his successor “totally groundless.”

“The peril facing the economy isn’t a potential recession; it’s losing highly reliable, accurate and transparent data on the health of the world’s largest economy,” she writes. Either Trump has resorted to “clear and brazen scapegoating” not unlike what’s happened in Russia and China, or he’s somehow discovered that “a career statistician was actually a politically motivated operative who successfully and single-handedly manipulated official government statistics.”

Keep in mind, the government has been chipping away at the BLS’s ability to generate timely statistics for quite some time now. The layoffs from Elon Musk’s DOGE overhaul were just the cherry on top of an already-severe funding slide:

As for the data itself, John Authers is admittedly surprised by the labor market U-turn. “This latest report incorporated massive downward revisions to show the weakest jobs growth since 2011,” he writes. Still, he says the BLS isn’t to blame for the steep revisions, Covid is: “Companies got out of the habit of responding to government surveys in 2020 when the pandemic gave them more important things to do, and it’s proved habit-forming. Response rates are historically poor, so it’s not surprising that the numbers need revisions.”

Looking ahead, “the next BLS commissioner will either be loyal to the data or loyal to the president, but whoever it is can’t be both,” Kathryn writes. “The economy will either end up with a watchdog or a lapdog.”

Bonus Economy Reading:

The Fed is grappling with conflicting information and heightened uncertainty. For now, patience makes sense. — Bloomberg’s Editorial Board
Recent economic reports show that there’s little booming these days outside of AI and equities. — Conor Sen
The Federal Reserve may be under siege, but have faith that it can do its job despite all the noise. — Bill Dudley
Tariffs are a massive tax on households and businesses, and they’re dragging down consumer spending and job growth. — Robert Burgess

The Butter Book

If this whole opinion columnist thing doesn’t work out for David Fickling, at least we know he’ll have a very lucrative career writing book blurbs. I’ve never purchased something so fast in my life:

A Japanese novel first published eight years ago, Butter, by Asako Yuzuki, has become a cult bestseller in English-language markets after a translation was published in 2024. It’s an intoxicating mix, combining cooking and murder with a feminist meditation on anomie and body image in modern Japan — think Silence of the Lambs crossed with Julie & Julia and Audition.

COOKING! MURDER! FEMINISM! My brain couldn’t come up with a more perfect combination.

The Butter blurb comes from David’s column about butter, the price of which has surged 47% in New Zealand in the year through June. “It’s not the only place where lovers of dairy fat are feeling the pinch,” he notes. “French newspaper Les Echos speculated last month that supply shortfalls may lead to butter shortages by Christmas. Prices in the UK are their highest in at least 12 years, at £4.86 ($6.45) for 500 grams. Restaurants in London are substituting olive oil.”

Butter, the book, offers a clue why: “Throughout the novel, butter is used as a synecdoche for all the sensory pleasures that the goal- and diet-obsessed protagonists are denying themselves: food, sex, and a life free of pervasive, unshakeable guilt,” he writes. Even more fascinating, “traditional Japanese food is almost never eaten” in the novel, which tracks with what’s happening in real life:

“This wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s spent much time on social media lately,” he says. “Asian cake chains like China’s Holiland and South Korea’s Butterful & Creamorous are mainstays of Instagram.” On TikTok, my feed is full of tourists in Paris raiding the dairy aisle for Le Beurre Bordier. If the thought of taking home an entire suitcase full of vacuum-sealed butter sounds insane to you, just call me crazy.

The Dreaded Plane Whistler

It’s rare to have a flight where something strange doesn’t happen. For instance, I visited my friend in West Palm Beach over the weekend and on the way there, a man in the row ahead of me decided it was socially acceptable to whistle while he was watching the news. This wasn’t some sporadic tick — it was a full-blown melody that was so loud I could hear it through my AirPods. The passenger in front of him politely asked him to stop (“hey man, the whistling, it’s just … a lot”) but he ignored him and kept on whistling.

On the way back, it wasn’t a passenger so much as the plane itself. Before the wheels went up, the pilot informed us the plane was basically brand new. “We’ve only flown three legs on this thing,” he told us proudly over the speaker. In theory, this sounds like a good thing! But when you’re sitting on the tarmac, it’s like: What can I do with this information except panic a little??

It’s a feeling that Howard Chua-Eoan says is quite common, despite the act of flying being exceedingly safe: “One estimate has 30% to 40% of people in developed countries experiencing anxiety ranging from mild concern to a complete refusal to fly. Because each flight involves scores of passengers, anything that goes wrong generates an immense amount of emotion, multiplied look by worried look among aisle mates as anxiety spreads across the cabin. It all contributes to the storehouse of fear and apprehension already out there about the capacities of the extraordinary machines to which we entrust our lives again and again.”

The kicker? “Experts say the most acute form of aerophobia is found among those with the most vivid imaginations.” Curse me for majoring in creative writing! Oh, and read the whole thing.

Telltale Health Charts

You wanna know how bleak the health care situation is in the US? Venus Williams — a woman who has earned north of $40 million in prize money over the course of her incredible tennis career — returned to the pro court not for more fame or fortune, but for … health insurance. “I had to come back for the insurance because they informed me earlier this year I’m on COBRA,” she told reporters at the DC Open. “Her comments get at the problem buried so deep into our system of health insurance that no policymaker has the nerve to touch it, which is that health and work shouldn’t be linked,” writes Kathryn Anne Edwards, because it “creates coverage gaps that the government must fill.”

Novo Nordisk is kinda like the popular kid who peaked in high school. They had everything going for them — cool clothes, straight A’s, athletic talent and no curfew — but at the five-year reunion, they literally haven’t changed at all and frankly, it’s a little sad. Of course, nobody’s weeping for Big Pharma (despite its lackluster growth, Novo is still the world’s third-best performing pharma stock over five years), but Chris Hughes says the maker of Ozempic and its sibling Wegovy could have “taken advantage of the strength of its shares” by making an acquisition. “Novo could have diversified, say, by buying a biotech specializing in related areas such heart disease. Instead, Novo’s fortunes have yoked largely to Wegovy,” he writes.

ICYMI

The New York Post is expanding to Los Angeles.

Governor Greg Abbott is not happy with Texas Dems.

Trump piles on the Sydney Sweeney jean-gate.

It’s official: The Brooklyn Mirage is cooked.

Chairish got acquired for $85 million.

Kickers

RushTok is back and we are not ready.

A nightmare at the New York bar exam.

Camcorders are cool again.

Notes: Please send butter and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net.

Follow Us