Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street brunch, our Sunday look ahead to this week's

market-moving events, along with the weekend's top news and analysis.

Hello, today is Sunday, August 3rd, and I'm your host, Kim Kahn. Wall Street faces a big

and unexpected test this week. Can the markets trust data from the

Bureau of Labor Statistics? President Donald Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erica McIntarfer in the wake of

week-July payrolls and major downward revisions to previous months, claiming she had been rigging the

numbers. Let's assume the accusations of rigging are hyperbole and don't require an independent

counsel investigation, a cessation of all data collection currently, and an eventual

restatement of every data point going back to January 2024.

Acting Commissioner William Wiatrowski will still have a job convincing financial markets

across the globe that the future figures aren't affected by White House pressure.

I think it's clearly a worrying development, and it's a sort of thing you'd expect to see in a banana republic,

not in the USA, Pepperstone strategist Michael Brown told seeking alpha. Naturally, it raises questions

over how reliable the data will be going forwards, especially as it seems one's head is now

on the chopping block if you present information that Trump doesn't want to see.

And it's not just the jobs report. The BLS also calculates the CPI. That's both sides of the Fed's mandate hanging in the balance.

The first test will come on Thursday when Q2 productivity and unit labor cost figures arrive, along with weekly jobless claims.

I'd like to hope that the BLS are still able to produce the accurate statistics they are known for,

and the market will still react to the data in any case, Brown said.

The bigger worry is the precedent this sets for other institutions, such as the Fed,

and whether Trump now rams up his attacks on Powell and Company once more.

If so, that's naturally going to be a headwin for stocks,

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