Newsweek’s One-Sided, but Blunt Reporting: 'The Economy Sucks'

The headline "The Economy Sucks" might be something you'd expect to see in Rolling Stone or on Slate.com, but certainly not in a reputable news magazine, right?

Yet, the January 21 issue of Newsweek defied expectations by using that for part of a headline for a one-sided, pro-Bill Clinton view of the economy. The article recalled the 1992 "It's the economy, stupid!" campaign as it tore down the current economy.

So, why does the economy "suck" according to Newsweek? It isn't that there's a depression looming or that we're in recessionary times, we're just "perilously close to sliding into a recession."

"Today, the nation is perilously close to sliding into a recession; in '92, the economy had already started growing, though a jobless recovery doomed George H.W. Bush's re-election bid anyway," Gross wrote. "The lesson? Voters' perceptions matter more than whether the economy is technically expanding or contracting."

It isn't as cut and dried as Gross has portrayed it however. There are "recession skeptics" out there the Newsweek report didn't include.

Recent reports from The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg indicated a majority of economists they surveyed think the economy will be spared of a recession. The Wall Street Journal indicated economists they surveyed thought there was only a 42 percent chance the economy would experience a recession and the Bloomberg survey indicated economists thought the likelihood of a recession was only 40 percent.