Business Coverage

On Friday, Uncle Sam's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the nation's unemployment rate rose to a seasonally adjusted 9.7% in August, and that the economy lost another 216,000 seasonally adjusted jobs. In various ways, the press tried to put a happy face on the news and otherwise tried to minimize its impact. It also continued, as it has for years, to ignore what really happened on the…

Give Sharon Silke Carty of USA Today credit for unearthing important information about the serious back-office problems with Uncle Sam's Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) program, popularly known as "Cash for Clunkers." This is the program that ABC, CBS, and NBC have all characterized as "a victim of its own success." But Carty didn't do nearly as much as she could have with the information…

(image found at townnews.com) Yesterday's Employment Situation Report from Uncle Sam's Bureau of Labor Statistics had lots of dismal news. One of the bigger disappointments, but sadly not one of the bigger surprises, is that the teenage unemployment rate reached an all-time seasonally adjusted high of 25.5%. People who know even a little bit about economics should understand why, but an oddly…

It's been nearly seven months since CNBC reporter Rick Santelli took a stand against the Obama administration, which inspired the tea party movement - and the White House hasn't forgotten. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked by CNBC Washington correspondent John Harwood why the administration decided to go after Santelli after his Feb. 19 call for a metaphorical revolt over…

In the same month the United States shed 216,000 nonfarm jobs, our neighbor to the north added 27,100.Canada's unemployment rate is also a full percentage point lower than ours.As American media focus on the just-released August employment data, will they point out this gain in Canada and how much better our neighbor's labor markets are doing than ours?Consider that as the Associated Press…

Rachel Maddow, gun lover? Well, sort of - and with some strings attached, of course. The MSNBC host of the "The Rachel Maddow Show" appeared on Jimmy Fallon's Aug. 31 NBC show and told the host about her first date - at a shooting range. "My first date with my girlfriend Susan was at a shooting range," Maddow said. "That was awesome. It was ladies' day on the range. Her sister is a lifetime NRA…

Imagine being sued in a third-world country with a leftist government and you're a major international corporation with deep pockets. Sounds like you might have a deck stacked against you, right?  Back in May, CBS's "60 Minutes" aired a one-sided segment that could be viewed as nothing short of serving as an accomplice in $27-billion extortion effort by a leftist Latin American government…

Ford and the United Auto Workers are set to begin new contract talks under a set of circumstances radically different from any previously faced by either party. There is the "minor" matter of the union's ownership stakes in General Motors and Chrysler that arose in the wake of those two companies' government-engineered bankruptcy filings, accomplished with more than a little rule-bending by the…

Some of us have been wondering how viable the Voluntary Employee Benefit Arrangements (VEBAs) set up by the United Auto Workers for its auto industry employees really are. This is of particular concern at the VEBAs tied in to General Motors and Chrysler. What happens to the employer stock these VEBAs own will heavily influence whether they have the money to pay promised benefits. The answer to…

It's a cute theory and maybe it deserves brief (pardon the pun) coverage in some other section of the paper, but the front page of the Monday Washington Post?Readers of the August 31 edition were greeted by a 17-paragraph below-the-fold front page story by business writer Ylan Q. Mui about "What Underwear Says About the Economy."Mui explains:

It's no secret the print newspaper industry is struggling. It's become all too common to hear that papers, like the Christian Science Monitor or the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, have ceased publishing a print edition and gone completely online. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright addressed this challenge and its impact on a government at the Aspen Institute's Forum on Communications and…

Julia Seymour, Kyle Drennen, and several others at NewsBusters have done a great job (here and here, here, and here, just for starters) exposing the establishment media's rush to characterize the government's Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) program, commonly known as "Cash for Clunkers" program, a success. This media meme has persisted despite processing snafus, slow payments to dealers,…

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been out of office over a month and there are still those working at major media outlets that just can't get over their obsessions with dissecting everything the former GOP vice-presidential nominee does. Case and point - Mark Silva, a blogger for the Chicago Tribune's "The Swamp," in an Aug. 26 post took it upon himself to try to rationalize why Palin would…

Try to keep a straight face when you hear this: President Barack Obama isn't getting enough media love. That's the world view of MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews - at least when it comes to the economy. According to Matthews, there has been a plethora of positive economic news - from a stock market that has shrugged off the threat of bad liberal policy, i.e. cap-and-trade or ObamaCare, to…