America’s Federal Reserve could soon be flying blind

One of the most anodyne phrases a central banker can utter is that they are “data-dependent”. It is a sophisticated way of saying that they do not know the future, and so will wait and see what the numbers look like. These days, though, declarations of data dependence by the Federal Reserve are more interesting: they sound like plaintive pleas rather than statements of the obvious. Many of the data points that allow the Fed, analysts and investors to understand the American economy are on the verge of disappearing, a casualty of the looming government shutdown.