If there was ever an obvious conflict of interest in economic reporting, this may very well qualify.

NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell evaluated the housing crisis solution proposals of both Democratic presidential hopefuls Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) on the March 25 "NBC Nightly News."

"Clinton was the first of the two to sound alarms about the subprime mess with a plan a year ago," Mitchell said. "Obama followed a week later with a call for a summit. Since then both have gotten more specific."

You might disagree with how he slashed the Fed funds rate during times of economic turmoil as Federal Reserve chairman.

You might have even disavowed him after showing his coziness with the Clinton administration throughout the 1990s. But after 18 years of public service, you can't deny that Alan Greenspan should have a shot in the private sector.

However, despite media accolades through four Republican and one Democratic administration, some in the media think he broke an unspoken rule by going to work as a consultant for a hedge fund. One CNBC report called it "unseemly." The January 15 Wall Street Journal even hinted he may be profiting from the housing crisis, something they suggested he caused.

So, GDP grew at 4.9 percent - the highest growth in four years.

Instead of greeting the news with optimism about the American economy - right as the housing woes are setting in - the media used it as an excuse to hype economic downturn.

"The economy is slowing down so fast this quarter you can see the skid marks as it slams on the brakes," Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group, said in an Associated Press story on December 20.

The story also quoted former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who isn't optimistic either.

On Sunday's This Week, ABC's George Stephanopoulos pressed former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to agree on the wisdom of raising taxes. Stephanopoulos wondered “what would be wrong with letting the tax cuts for the top one percent expire?” and suggested that to “shore up” Social Security and Medicate that Congress “limit the tax cuts.”

Citing a Congressional Budget Office study, “which was just stunning to me,” Stephanopoulos recounted how “it said that in the last two years -- from 2003 to 2005 -- the increase in income for the top one percent exceeded the total income of the bottom 20 percent. Given that, what would be wrong with letting the tax cuts for the top one percent expire and plowing that money into education?” Following up, Stephanopoulos proposed: “If you have long-term problems in Medicare and then also in Social Security, wouldn't it make sense to, in addition to limiting them as I know you would like to do, to limit the tax cuts and shore up the programs in that way?” Stephanopoulos started the interview by summarizing John Edwards' claim that “average Americans are not winning in this current economy and the policies that we've been following for a long time are part of the reason.” Greenspan retorted: “His remedies will make it worse.”

As oil flirts with $100 a barrel, guess who is getting gold stars for reporting ... NPR.

National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" stories on $100 a barrel oil this week have featured some underreported views on the industry: The economy is surviving the higher costs, and the oil companies are using the profits for future exploration.

Reporter Jim Zarroli told NPR listeners what was supposed to happen, saying, "Time and again, economists from Alan Greenspan on down have warned that oil prices are inflationary ... Interest rates go up, borrowing becomes more difficult, and growth slows."

But, Zarroli also pointed out the unique trend that gets little coverage: Despite the rise in oil prices since March 2007, the economy has continued to grow at a strong pace.

There's more than one way to survive the rising cost of oil.

What's another $500 taken out of your paycheck over the course of a year? It probably isn't much to global warming alarmists like Al Gore, but that's what it could cost you if legislation pending in the U.S. Senate is passed into law.

Does that $500 have your attention? Well, multiply that times every member of your immediate family.

According to a November 11 Washington Times editorial, a bill introduced in the Senate by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.) that would require companies to scale back greenhouse-gas emissions could cost Americans $4 trillion to $6 trillion over the next 40 years.

If that bill were passed and made law, the tax would cost every man, woman and child - more than 303 million Americans - $494 a year, a significant burden on the U.S. economy.

If you watched the October 28 CBS “Evening News,” you would probably have been expecting a rough ride today based on their reporting.

The likely ousting of Merrill Lynch CEO Stanley O’Neal prompted CBS correspondent Randall Pinkston to tell viewers to expect the worst as far as the stock market goes.

“O'Neal's likely exit sets the stage for another rough ride on Wall Street this week with more dramatic peaks expected in crude oil prices which hit nearly $92 a barrel last week and further uncertainty in the housing market,” Pinkston said.

However, in the short-term, that’s not the case. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 64 points to close at 13,869 one day after his gloomy report. And, investors even welcomed the news of the shakeup at Merrill Lynch (NYSE:MER), as its stock finished up 2 percent.

The similarities are eerie. On Oct. 19, 1987, the day of the Black Monday stock market crash there was trouble from the Iranians, a two-term Republican president nearing the end of his term and a network TV news media voicing warnings the American economy might be doomed. Except this day in 1987, the stock market dropped 508 points.

“It’s a day that will be in bold print in history books – Black Monday, October 19th, 1987, when the stock market went into a freefall, losing more in one day than it did on Black Tuesday in 1929,” anchor Tom Brokaw said on the Oct. 19, 1987, NBC “Nightly News.” “And while conditions are much stronger now than they were then, today’s precipitous plunge struck fear in the hearts and pocketbooks of even Wall Street veterans.”

CNN even warned for the worst: “[N]ow some analysts argue that the stock market’s recent activity is heading for recession, if not depression in the 1990s,” said CNN correspondent Mark Left on the Oct. 19, 1987, CNN “PrimeNews.”

Even though we’re not in a recession, people “feel” like we’re in a recession and that’s what counts.

Sounds like liberal hogwash, doesn’t it? Well, that’s how CNN Senior Business Correspondent Ali Velshi reacted to a CNN-Opinion Research poll.

“Get this: 46 percent of Americans think the economy is in a recession – 46 percent. Nearly half of all Americans think that we're in a recession,” Velshi said on the October 18 “American Morning.”

However, Velshi told viewers the economy isn’t in recession by textbook definition.

“[T]his is interesting, because by official standards, we're not in a recession,” he said. “Recession is a sustained decline in economic growth. We haven't seen any decline in economic growth. We’ve seen some decline, but not a sustained decline.”

The title of Laura Ingraham's new book is "Power to the People," and the conservative commentator paraded power of her own to burn in her smackdown with Chris Matthews on this afternoon's "Hardball." The bone of contention was Matthews's suggestion that former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan had, in his new book, said that oil was the key to the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq.

View video here.

As Brent Baker noted, NBC’s Matt Lauer claimed the "liberal bloggers" were going to have a field day with Alan Greenspan’s new memoir – especially the remarks critical of Bush. But before the bloggers jumped, the whole Bush-bashing publicity cycle began with the Dinosaur Media. Their field day began with the newspapers, in particular, Bob Woodward at the Washington Post (noted here on NB by Matthew Sheffield), and continued in the usual network television bashing cycle, starting with "60 Minutes" on CBS. NBC's "Today" demonstrated its routine appetite to inflict another bad-news bruising on the GOP.

“Harsh accusation,” ABC anchor Dan Harris teased at the top of Sunday's World News as he highlighted how “one of the most respected figures in Washington says the Bush administration went to war in Iraq because of oil.” Harris soon referred to it as “an eyebrow raising allegation on Iraq” in a new book from Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve. But after a Monday Washington Post story, in which Greenspan declared that oil was “not the administration's motive,” and appearance by on the Today show made it abundantly clear the inaccuracy of the implication that Greenspan was somehow endorsing a left-wing conspiracy theory about how George W. Bush went to war to financially benefit Dick Cheney's oil industry friends, ABC's World News on Monday failed to offer any correction for its incendiary, and erroneous, reporting. In fact, the September 17 World News didn't mention Greenspan at all.

It's fitting that now that he's left his post as chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan's words are being as closely scrutinized as they were back in his days at the Fed.

Not carefully enough, though, it seems.

Over the weekend, a media firestorm errupted after the Washington Post printed a news article claiming that in his memoirs, Greenspan said the ouster of the Saddam Hussein government was just about oil.

Unfortunately for the liberal press and blogosphere, Greenspan did not say what was attributed to him. After the news broke, Greenspan called up the Post to say he'd been quoted out of context: