Economists have warned that the Trump administration's move to slash federal staff and research funding could undermine the quality and credibility of US "gold standard" statistics that can shake Wall Street's $105 trillion stock and bond markets in milliseconds, from employment reports to inflation indices, and underpin policies that shape the trajectory of the world's largest economy. Ricardo Rees, a professor at the London School of Economics and an adviser to the Richmond Fed, said: "All the cuts in federal funding, and some of the job cuts pushed by the Department of Efficiency... are often a fatal blow to the already tight investigations." He added: "The investigations behind the consumer price index, gross domestic product, etc. - I think all of them could be affected."