I think PDO is useful if it has been very sustained like what we're seeing now. It's a symptom of a very persistent pattern. Since persistence is often the way to go in long range forecasting it's useful in that way.
lol. read something other than whatever the eff you read. That happens in all administrations.
And in the case today, the numbers from previous months were corrected upward.
As Dewey said, queue the conspiracy lunatics.