Pouring cold water on Fake-a-Hike Janet

FEDERAL Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said last week that an interest rate hike would be “appropriate” this month if the economic data hold up. Well, the only big piece of data left will be released Friday.

That’s when the Labor Department announces job growth for February.

Experts are expecting the usual — growth of about 188,000 jobs and a 0.1 percentage point drop in the unemployment rate, to 4.7 percent.

That wouldn’t be as good as January, when job growth came in at an unexpectedly strong 227,000. But, as I’ve showed you in previous columns, there are never any real job increases in January — it’s all about the Labor Department’s seasonal adjustments.

If the job growth announced this Friday comes in near expectations — 188,000, give or take 20,000 — it’s almost a given that Yellen and her Fed colleagues will decide to raise interest rates at their meeting next week.

On Wednesday, payroll processor ADP said a healthy 298,000 private sector jobs were created last month. That may or may not be indicative of actual results. Remember, ADP said 246,000 jobs were created in January — before Labor said the “official” number was 227,000.

After Yellen’s recent comments, Wall Street has determined that a March rate hike is almost a certainty. But could Friday’s job report be weak enough to cause the Fed to again hit the pause button?

It would take a truly awful report to do that. The financial markets have already increased interest rates tremendously, and the Fed needs to catch up.

Yellen’ s decision comes at a curious time, since the US economy isn’t doing very well. The nation’s gross domestic product growth is actually slowing. The Atlanta Federal Reserve said this week that the expansion is at a 1.2 percent annual rate in the first quarter of 2017 — down from 1.3 percent last month. And there’s no sign that it is going to get any better in the months ahead.

That 1.2 percent is worse than last year, which itself was slow.

And even that pathetically slow growth is being called into question.

As Walter J. Williams of Shadow Government Statistics points out: “How can GDP be in its 22nd quarter of expansion when industrial produc- tion (a major component of GDP) is in its 36th quarter of non-expansion?” That downturn, Williams says, rivals how badly it did during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The New York Times has a dilemma. Like every other newspaper, the Times characterized as baseless President Trump’s recent accusation that his campaign was wiretapped. Or, more precisely, the paper said that Trump didn’t provide any evidence of the alleged wiretapping.

Fair enough. Trump didn’t give any proof. He just sent out one of his infamous tweets. But does that mean he’s wrong? I’ll get back to that.

The reason the Times has a dilemma is that, on Jan. 20, the paper ran a front page story with the headline “Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides.”

There were four bylines on that story, which read, “American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of Presidentelect Donald J. Trump, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, current and former senior American officials said.”

So, would the Times like to retract the Jan. 20 front page article? Or would it like to amend its piece about Trump’s allegations that his campaign was wiretapped by adding, “Trump may not have proof, but the Times confirmed back in January that wiretapping did occur.”

It’s unclear whether the wiretapping to which the Times is referring was of Trump’s people or whether Trump’s people were picked up on electronic surveillance — which is the proper term — of Russian phones.

Either way, the Times knows — and I’m told its reporters saw transcripts of the conversations — that Trump’s people had been recorded on bugs.

So there are two choices: Either correct the Jan. 20 story or admit that Trump may be at least a little right.

Now, I’m going to take a stab at what really happened based on an educated guess by an intelligence source that has been excellent in the past.

The Obama White House probably didn’t wiretap Trump or hack his emails. Too sloppy. Too obvious. And I’d hope an American president would be above all that.

But that doesn’t mean one US intelligence agency, on its own, didn’t record Trump conversations. And since Obama was president, he could have received the transcripts of those conversations just by asking.

Which agency? My bet is on the National Security Agency, whose job it is to spy on folks, both foreign and domestic.

And that’s how the Times could have come to learn about the wiretappings. The only people who know the true origin of the story are those four Times reporters and their editors — and, of course, their sources. So Trump may be right in alleging his people were wiretapped, although maybe not in Trump Tower. The Obama White House is correct in saying it didn’t do anything. And the Times’ Jan 20 story would be accurate since it probably did learn of the wiretaps through “current and former senior American officials.”

And in the meantime, the Times needs to decide which side of its dilemma it wants to stick to. It can’t have it both ways — Trump is either correct or its Jan. 20 story is wrong.