Last night on Bloomberg TV, they had an interview with Jason Furman, President Obama's Chief Economist. What caught my attention was right at the beginning of the interview, with Bloomberg's Hans Nichols whereby he mentions the following to Furman: "You're the man who brings the President the jobs numbers on Thursday night, the Thursday night before everyone gets to see them." Why this came as a huge surprise to me, was that as far as I and everyone around me knew, no one except the BLS has access to the data, and that the data wasn't available till 8am on Friday morning. I remember a video in March of last year, where PBS Newshour interviewed Karen Kosanovich [3] of the BLS, where she mentions that her and others are quarantined, and she mentions how tight the security measures are. This just makes me wonder, how is Furman getting the NFP data (email? in person?), and who else is getting it? If the Fed minutes were being leaked to congress and lobbyists [4], anything is possible is all I'm saying.
Bloomberg's Interview [5] with Furman (important part is right at the beginning)
PBS Newshours Interview (important part starts at the 1 minute mark till 1:30 mark)
