Tuesday evening, I wrote that there appears to be a need for an intervention among the economics writers at the Associated Press.
At the time, I was referring to how the wire service's Christopher Rugaber, in his dispatch on a trade group's upbeat business sentiment survey appearing about an hour after Martin Crutsinger's writeup on the horrible March trade imbalance, failed to report Crutsinger's relayed observation, based on the opinions of others, that the economy likely contracted in this year's first quarter instead of barely growing at the 0.2 percent annualized rate currently recognized.
Based on today's AP reports, it appears that Rugaber is more determined than ever not to tell readers how bad the first quarter was and how weak the current economy is, while reporter Josh Boak, who was tasked with covering yet another awful report on productivity, seems to fall somewhere in betwee his two colleagues.
Rugaber's 9:41 a.m. coverage of ADP's April private-sector payrolls report, which came in showing a disappointing 169,000 jobs added compared to far higher expectations, claimed that it:
... could raise fears that the economy is slipping into a period of sluggish growth, after expanding at a healthy pace for most of last year.
Uh, Chris, at a bare minimum, even if you refuse to recognize others' forecasts, the economy already slipped "into a period of sluggish growth" in the first quarter. That's what the currently reported 0.2 percent annualized GDP growth figure signifies. The "slip" is already a reality.
But it's probably worse than that, and perhaps much worse. That's because, as noted yesterday, in the wake of the weak trade report, analysts almost across the board came out and said that they believe the economy really contracted during the first quarter.
Yours truly and Rugaber were both on ADP's conference call today. During that call, Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics cited two reasons for the "disappointing" result: "First ... ill effects of collapse in oil prices in the energy sector," and "second, the strong dollar." He believes that each factor, when fully played out, will cause direct and indirect job losses of roughly 250,000. Yet Rugaber wrote that Zandi "blamed the shortfall mostly on the dollar's strength." No he didn't, Chris. If anything, the fact that he mentioned the energy sector first means that he believes that it's the currently more important factor.
Though it also didn't mention forecasters' predictions of a first-quarter contraction, Boak's report on productivity at least recognized that things have been "tepid" for some time, while dragging out that favorite excuse, the weather:
But the (productivity) figures can be an extremely volatile on a quarterly basis. This is only the third back-to-back quarterly decrease in the past 25 years.
Overall economic growth essentially flat-lined in the first quarter, rising at a tepid annual pace of only 0.2 percent, the government reported last week. The combination of harsh winter weather, falling oil prices hurting domestic energy firms and a West Coast ports dispute appears to have stifled the economy at the start of the year. Gross domestic product had risen at an annual rate of 2.2 percent in last year's October-December quarter.
In early April, it was Boak who finally admitted, after an extremely disappointing March jobs report following several months during which AP reporters and the rest of the business press did their customary "all is well" routine as economic data deteriorated, that ”For months, the U.S. economy’s strength has been flagging.” Thanks for finally getting around to that, good buddy.
These three reporters really need to get their stories straight — or, better yet (something we can virtually guarantee they'll never do), concentrate on relaying key facts instead of injecting their armchair analyses. Believe it or not, guys, we don't want people who are supposed to be beat reporters telling us what to think. You "Three Amigos" have your hands full simply telling us what the various reports say and what a representative cross-section of others — i.e., not you — think of them.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
