Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[marketmaven]

CROOK NEWS: US probes irregular Conference Board data releases
Thu Feb 17, 2005 05:15 PM ET
http://yahoo.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?type=economicNews&storyID=7666586§ion=....

NEW YORK, Feb 17 (Reuters) - The Conference Board said on Thursday it is cooperating with a federal agency's investigation into irregularities surrounding the release of its monthly Consumer Confidence Index. The Conference Board, a private economic research group, also said its senior business analyst, Delos R. Smith, has been placed on temporary leave pending the investigation. "During the process of our cooperation with the agency, we discovered that one of our staff did not follow some of our stated protocols and procedures with respect to the distribution of the Consumer Confidence Index to the media," the New York-based organization said in a press statement.

"We take this matter very seriously. We have advised the agency and have commissioned a thorough independent examination. In the interim, the employee has been placed on administrative leave pending the conclusion of our review." Reached by telephone at home, Smith declined to comment.

The Conference Board did not say which agency was conducting the probe. Like many news organizations, Reuters receives the consumer confidence data from The Conference Board on the understanding it will be published exactly at the specified embargo time. A Conference Board spokesman said he did not know how many news organizations Smith had been passing the data to or how long he had been doing so. That was for the investigation to establish, he said.

Earlier on Thursday, CNBC television reported that Smith had been passing on the data to at least two news organizations, Market Watch and Need To Know News. CNBC reported Smith as saying he had done this in order to help these journalists prepare their news reports. (LOL, Sure hey thanks !! -UFB!)

Neither Dow Jones & Co Inc (DJ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , the parent company of MarketWatch, nor Need To Know News could comment immediately.

Consumer confidence data in the U.S. are important for financial markets because consumer spending accounts for up to 70 percent of the country's gross domestic product. Barometers of consumer confidence, therefore, are important measures of the health of the economy, by far the largest in the world.

The Conference Board said the investigation centered "solely" on the distribution of the data, and "in no way suggests the integrity of this Index or the data that comprises it have been compromised." The next release, the Board's snapshot of consumer confidence for February, is scheduled for Feb. 22.

Last year, the University of Michigan asked the Federal Bureau of Investigations to investigate an allegation its own consumer sentiment data were accessed and released ahead of an embargo time.