One of Jimmy Carter’s top aides was banned from talking about recessions or depressions. So the person in charge of the campaign against US inflation in the late 1970s came to describing downturns as “bananas.” Bendy food is again fashionable in economic parlance.
Banana-republic governance has been evoked to describe President Donald Trump’s firing of the government’s top labor statistician after a poor jobs report and threats against the head of the Federal Reserve for not lowering interest rates faster. The Oval Office’s disdain for anything it might consider bad news, and the instinct to dispose of those who deliver it, is not only corrosive, but sets a terrible example.