Bailouts

Here's how the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger and Daniel Wagner reported the housing portion of their Tuesday report on the day's economic news ("Factories aid bumpy recovery, housing still weak"): Single-family home construction, which represented nearly 80 percent of the market, fell 4.2 percent. And requests for building permits, considered a good sign of future activity, slid 3.1…

Are even the most liberal media members starting to realize the administration's "Recovery Summer" campaign was a complete joke?Such appears to be the case for New York Times columnist Bob Herbert who on Saturday published a piece absolutely excoriating President Obama for not exclusively focusing on jobs after his inauguration last year:The Obama administration seems to be feeling sorry for…

A liberal Huffington Post contributor and board member of the website's Investigative Fund rained on Ed Schultz's GM success story victory parade on Thursday.After the MSNBC host crowed about the positive earnings report from the government-owned car company, he clearly expected that left-leaning guest Leo Hindery was going to join him in the celebration.Quite to the contrary, the admittedly "…

Ed Schultz on Thursday blamed Republicans for all the unemployed people living in America today.As he began the most recent installment of the "Ed Show" on MSNBC, the host said, "The Republican Party has been on a crusade against the middle class and the poor for the last 30 years. We're now seeing the wreckage of that race to the bottom line culture."He disgracefully continued, "Today a…

Unplanned but necessary "improvements," or induced corrections? I'll report; readers can decide. My early afternoon post at my home blog dealt with Government/General Motors' profitability and CEO Ed Whitacre's "coincidental" step-down from his CEO position. That post originally noted two things that seemed problematic in the Associated Press's reporting about the company's plans for an…

Comedian Jon Stewart on Wednesday joined the growing liberal chorus attacking Republicans for their concerns about rising taxes and exploding budget deficits. The only thing different about the "Daily Show" host's approach was that he needed vulgarity to make his point. Potentially even worse, Stewart in his opening segment Wednesday actually used CNN's Fareed Zakaria to support his view that…

Earlier today, NB's Lachlan Markey covered Bill O'Reilly's interview with the Fox Business Channel's Charles Gasparino.In that interview, Gasparino confirmed what the New York Post reported in April of last year, namely that "GE Execs Encouraged CNBC Staff to Go Easy on Obama."The suits at GE, including Chairman Jeff Inmelt, had a clear motivation for encouraging their reporters to lighten up,…

There are quite a few shaky assertions in Alan Zibel's Associated Press report yesterday about Freddie Mac's latest quarterly loss ($6 billion), its latest bailout installment request to the U.S. Treasury ($1.8 billion), and the cumulative taxpayer bailout amounts that have been paid out to Freddie Mac and big sister Fannie Mae thus far ($148.2 billion) -- too many to cover in a blog post. So I'…

As media make their case to the American people that the Bush tax cuts should expire, one of the strategies being employed is to claim that Republicans are refusing to "pay for" their extension.A perfect example of this tactic was seen on Sunday's "Meet the Press" when host David Gregory badgered House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Oh.) on this subject for over three minutes.After playing a…

Despite unemployment sitting at 9.5 percent and over 3 million jobs lost since this President was inaugurated, Newsweek's Howard Fineman says the economic policies enacted by Barack Obama "were good ones and smart ones and saved the day."Chatting with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Friday's "Countdown," Fineman was nicely set up by the shill asking the questions."Does anyone -- can anyone actually…

In what I believe is the first direct acknowledgment by the wire service of what so many have known for so long, the Associated Press's Tom Krisher wrote the following in an August 5 story about plans for an initial public offering by government-controlled General Motors (bolds are mine throughout this post): Ever since the Obama administration gave the automaker a $50 billion dollar survival…

Bad economic news just keeps piling up. Today, the news about jobless claims from the AP:Initial requests for jobless benefits rose last week to their highest level since April, a sign that hiring remains weak and some companies are still cutting workers.The Labor Department said Thursday that new claims for unemployment insurance rose by 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 479,000. Analysts had…

George Will and Paul Krugman had another showdown about fiscal policy on Sunday, and the ABC contributor made it crystal clear to viewers that he doesn't agree with the perilously liberal New York Times columnist.As the Roundtable segment of "This Week" moved to a discussion of whether more economic stimulus is needed versus deficit reduction, Krugman made his predictable request for the former.…