Rumors have long persisted that institutions such as Wall Street obtain non-public data through official channels for profit, with occasional news exposés but little significant impact. Recently, another revelation has surfaced: economic experts at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) privately colluded with Wall Street magnates, resulting in information leakage.
According to the revelation, these economic experts created a "super-user" list and sent multiple emails to users on the list, including some critical data on U.S. inflation, despite previous BLS assurances that no such "super-user" list existed.
However, emails revealed that in mid-February, a user inquired whether they could be added to the "super-user" list, and the BLS economist replied after a few minutes, "Yes, I can add you to the list."
The currently disclosed list includes many globally renowned institutions and corporations, excluding BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase, other notable Wall Street banks, hedge funds, and research firms revealed in the emails include: Castle Investment, Brevan Howard, Millennium Capital, Moore Capital, High-Frequency Economics, Nomura Securities International, and BNP Paribas among others.
As early as February this year, it was revealed that BLS staff sent an email to these "super-users" disclosing some non-public data, sparking a flurry of discussion. However, BLS explained at the time that it was a mistake, and interest waned thereafter.
Recently, BLS sent emails to these "super-users" again to provide them with some non-public data, but this time the explanations did not suffice. Emily Liddel, BLS Deputy Commissioner for Publication and Special Studies, stated that BLS encourages inquiries and allows its staff to engage with the public, but they will strive to provide equal access to information for everyone.
While claiming to provide equal access to information for everyone, it is clear that the situation is not quite equitable. Therefore, Liddel said they are currently working to repair trust and indicated that the information leak was the action of an individual employee, not the BLS.
