For the third time in three months, a sensitive piece of US economic data was prematurely released on the Internet on Tuesday, renewing concerns on Wall Street about controls over market-moving information.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Virginia, posted its monthly survey of regional manufacturing on its Web site about a half-hour before the scheduled 10 a.m. EST release time.
Though the Richmond report is considered less important than US employment and inflation data released early by the Labor Department in recent months, market analysts said it was still part of a worrying pattern that must quickly be stopped.
The mounting number of accidental early releases have spawned a flurry of unfounded market rumors before the public release of major economic reports in the past few weeks. But as more and more government agencies rush to publish data on the Internet, many view the glitches as temporary growing pains which will soon be rectified and expect the trend towards cyber data will only accelerate in the future.
"The problem is people who don't fully understand how to release data on the Net," said Don Fine, chief market analyst at Chase Asset Management. "Please first learn how to use the computer before you get on it."
The government meticulously guards the secrecy of its data and usually does not even show them to President Clinton until after the market closes on the eve of their public release.
So Fine said he was "astounded" on 12 January when the Bureau of Labor Statistics accidentally released the Producer Price Index, or PPI, a day early -- just two months after its embarrassing leak of the non-farm payrolls report in November.
In the aftermath of the payrolls fiasco, the bureau's commissioner, Katharine Abraham, said the only other similar occurrence she knew of was an accidental issuance of some information about the PPI on the Web in 1996.
But the bureau kept that incident quiet -- surmising that no one who understood the figures had seen them at the time -- until reporters raised questions about precedents after the payrolls incident in November last year.
