I receive the old-fashioned text version of MarketWatch's daily e-mail. That version of the e-mail always starts out with a short note from the editor about something that is being covered at the site that day.
Monday's e-mail from Steve Kerch, assistant managing editor/personal finance, was uncharacteristically enthusiastic about the economy. It was an enthusiasm that you'll see, after the jump, wasn't exactly reflected in his journalists' stories:
You have to wonder about all those doomsayers who predict the U.S. economy is on the brink of recession when you look at hotel rooms in New York that are filled at $600 a night, airplanes packed with passengers paying top dollar for flights to the Caribbean and Europe and highways jammed with cars guzzling $3-plus gallons of gas.
As far as travel goes this Thanksgiving holiday, the American consumer is in full rally mode. And it's not just the short jaunt to a family dinner on Thursday that's on the menu: More and more folks are making the Thanksgiving week a major vacation window, with international travel in particular seeing a big jump.
Thanksgiving long ago turned from a one-day holiday into a four-day weekend as population migration forced more folks to travel longer distances for family gatherings. But with each passing year it seems the holiday gets extended further, a fall break to bookend spring break four months later.
..... All those people who can afford these trips sure have something to be thankful for. And even if you aren't one of the crowd that's on the move, you can be thankful those folks are helping prop up the economy.
But MarketWatch reporter Greg Robb's story that day on the state of the economy (MarketWatch links require free registration) was about whether the economy would go into recession, and carried a headline that didn't reflect the story's content (bold is mine):
Economists think U.S. can dodge recession
While the U.S. economy faces a higher risk of recession from credit markets, housing and energy prices, the economists surveyed "still do not see a recession as the most likely outcome," said Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, the president of the National Association for Business Economics, who conducted the survey.
The median forecast expects the economy to slow in the fourth quarter to a 1.5% GDP growth rate and then gradually improve over the next year.
The economy grew at a 3.9% rate in the third quarter, and many economists expect an upward revision above 4.5% when the government revises the data on Nov. 29.
But according to the survey, some of the 50 economists expect a much steeper slowdown.
The five lowest forecasters expect growth at a paltry 0.5% rate in the fourth quarter and a 0.2% rate in the first quarter. But none forecast negative growth.
Given the unanaimity that growth will be positive, wouldn't a more accurate headline have been "Economists: U.S Will Dodge Recession"?
In a Monday article about holiday travel, MarketWatch's Laurie Mandaro turned a sunny economic outlook for the travel industry during the upcoming holiday into one involving trauma:
The travel purse is still plentiful for Thanksgiving
More crowded airports and highways this Thanksgiving travel season show U.S. consumers are overlooking high gasoline prices and falling home values when it comes to plane tickets and road trips, both more expensive than they were a year ago.
And they're not only meeting family obligations: A growing number of air travelers are using the Thanksgiving week to take off for the Caribbean and Europe, new data show.
All this means more crowds on planes, at airports and on the roadways, prompting comparisons to another hectic experience in the nation's collective psyche.
"It's sort of like going to Disney in the summer," said Barbara Higgins, vice president of customer experience for United Airlines .....
MarketWatch reporters could use an injection of Steve Kerch's balanced perspective. And if long travel lines and heavy crowds are the worst things impacting our "collective psyche," we truly do have a lot for which to be thankful.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
—Tom Blumer is president of a training and development company in Mason, Ohio, and is a contributing editor to NewsBusters




















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Doom and Gloom
November 21, 2007 - 00:10 ET by planetrepublicanExpect doom and gloom from MSM until a Dem, preferably Hill, gets in there. Then it will a miraculous recovery, surging economy, good times for all (except those "greedy Repubs"). I wonder if they still fool people? Does anyone believe them?
American Economy 101
November 21, 2007 - 00:52 ET by Lame CherryDecades ago the term "economy" disappeared in a paper I wrote explaining exactly what drives finance now as the world is now engulfed by not a hurricane which is driven by jet streams, but a hurricane which drives the jet stream.
By this I mean, normal economies where recessions, growth, depressions, stagnation disappeared shortly have the flux of the Nixon socialist fixed prices and Carter's economic degradation.
After this, the banking cartels took full control over the American Federal Reserve in printing currency at will and selling debt in bonds, but finally resorting to debt in dollars held and printed.
The Rockefeller, Warburg and Rothschild banking elite print money for the cost of paper and ink, in essence a 100 dollar bill costs them a penny, a penny which the American treasury picks up in debt. The cartel then takes this 100 into their Fed account and loans it to the United States government which has been dumping them worldwide in fueling a world economic expansion to keep it from international depression.
The world is afloat with this cheap currency. Currency now devalued by inflation as that is what one gets when one expands an economy by dumping money into it and everyone can buy on cheap credit.........and as an example the Saudi's have 200 billion dollars in an account, but since the dollar has plunged in this cycle by almost 1/3rd, they now have only 140 billion in buying power which upsets the world governments as they are all loosing money........just like Americans lost 20 percent value in their homes due to this market crunch.
That is the second "economy" in Americans in the upper levels have so much of this money in gaining wealth that they can afford 600 dollar hotel rooms and million dollar cars.....it is not that things cost this much, it is that inflation made money so cheap that anyone turning currency over can make huge sums.
A third "economy" is the underground economy which runs off book in the trillions. This can be you paying the kid to mow your lawn cash....or a Democrat paying Beaner Border Buster on paper 12 dollars an hour to be nanny, but only paying them in cash 6 dollars and pocketing the rest like the construction mafia has been doing......or it can be your local meth cartel or international mideast ecstasy or Russian opium cartel all of whom dump millions into the cartel banks which are skimmed and the Fed which runs it all keeps all that crime off book.
A fourth economy is the one the average person exists in. They never make enough, everything rapes them financially and if not for God's grace the ends would never meet.
This is how people can say that one sector is in horrid condition while you have Charlie Sheen lighting cigars with a hundred dollar bill. There is just so much currency having been printed to drive the world economic upper group to keep that group from going into depression that it takes a great deal of time to sponge up multi trillions of currency.
This storm is so large though that the people who created in the Rockefellers and Rothschilds were not in the least interested in gaining "money" as how many hundred billions does anyone ever need.
The real key is power in this. This same Euro centric cartel did this same thing to Great Britain in destroying the pound which once was world currency. This dates back to and is in connection with the reason for the World Wars which were instigated for bringing about this one world government.
One has to understand that the First World War was designed to destroy the Empire states. World War II was designed to destroy the powerful super colonial states.........and World War III will be set upon the world to destroy the solitary power states.
This is why the American currency and economy is being destroyed so that a new system of combined currency and combined "democratic" states such as the European, African and North American and Asian Unions coming about will have not national identities but only 3 currencies until only one emerges. It is easier to control things from a centralized economic state.
I will digress and predict that this manipulation while it is intended to start World War III in a power grab to destroy vast numbers of people who are a danger to elite is going to spiral out of control and eat up vast sectors in nuclear strikes.
The Eurasians never have played well together and without the American buffer they will with their combinded hundreds of million man armies soon start fighting with all their resources of destruction.
While the cartel might set off the bumper cars they are going to find the prizes they seek, especially Jerusalem as their sacred geometric capitol of the world having massive destruction in their laps literally.
Historically there is a crescent in Eurasia of death which tracks from the Rhine into the Balkans, down into Turkey and the Middle East, up into the Asian steppes over to India, trailing to Indochina and up to Korea.
Those are also the trade routes of all economies legal and illegal where a majority of the world population resides.
It is for this reason the United States must in manditory resolve convince the cartel they have moved in error and their plan to install the next "president" for the purpose of overseeing the end of the dollar for a new currency and a new combined North American state is catastrophe about to occur.
The Europeans which Ahmadinejad and Chavez drool over in Euro investment of oil revenues does not have enough Euros to absorb that kind of revenue. Europe will implode under cheap currency with a socialist base which does not have a base creation of wealth to deal with that kind of cheap money.
China will out produce the European market and Russia is incapable of anything but beligerance and war.
All of that means war. I will grant President Bush presence for using food as the doomsday price device against high oil inflation and gleaning from grains starch and oil to fuel America in a gambit to weather the hurricane which will sweep the world.
There is though infinite better ways of doing this. Wyoming and much of the west capped 2 out 3 oil wells with the one well only allowed 20% production. Anwar has an American supply of 40 years. Greenland which is our American resource has a bigger supply of oil than the Saudi reserves. (Note Iraq has a bigger reserve than even the Saudi.)
There is plenty of oil but the cartels have choke point monopolized this disaster into being created as they do all economic manipulations. America requires a President to institute sound production which creates wealth as I have blogged here in reasonable creation of raw material sold to the Eurasians in an Americanized free, seperate and sovereign states of Canada, America and Mexico.
This golden goose will be so powerful it will not be attacked nor in the cesspool of war zones to gain the ire of terrorists. It also will be too valuable to be ever attacked by the Eursasians when their war breaks out.
In that a real American economy will result not of debtor status nor poverty and rich, but what this Republic is intended to function as in Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Milton Friedman economics.
The cartels though engineered the opposite. Slave labor of Mexicans to run the machine. Canadian raw reserves to fuel it and American dependence in over spending and weanling wards of the state buying.
All of that is why one gets strange economic reviews as several economies are functioning under an economic doctrine which has nothing to do with finance.
It is a sin to kiss and swallow.
*HIC IACET ARTORIVS REX QVONDAM REXQVE FVTVRVS
At the Drudge Report there
November 21, 2007 - 01:55 ET by jdhawkAt the Drudge Report there has been a headline there stating, "Travel Nightmare to Spoil the Turkey." The artilce goes on and on about the weather and equipment malfunction will spoil travel for many Americans. Then, the real issue is revealed, "Airlines are predicting record numbers of passengers during the 12-day period surrounding Thursday's holiday, with about 90% of seats filled." In other words, the airlines are running at full tilt.
So, despite the sub-prime woes, the asset write downs, the impending recession or near recession, Americans are traveling like at no other time. How do they do it? Given what the drive by media tells us. The only conclusion one can reach is that Americans are mortgaging the house (if they have one) to pay for the trip to grandmas this Thanksgiving!
Woe is me . . .
The answer is right in front of you
November 21, 2007 - 08:19 ET by DanSPeople always say that times are tough, but times are way better than they were. In the sixties, I grew up middle class with one black and white tv, no remote, no air conditioning, no dishwasher and one car. Today, most middle class people have multiple color tvs, multiple computers with high speed internet, multiple cell phones, air conditioning, microwaves, dvd players, etc. Today's middle class and many who are considered 'poor' would be considered wealthy in prior eras. Look at all of your stuff and be thankful.