Economy

Former Reagan official David Stockman predicted that whoever was elected in 2016 would “inherit a recession.” Stockman, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget for President Ronald Reagan, said on May 25, 2016, that Wall Street would undergo “massive panic and selling.”  

On Sunday's Last Week Tonight, HBO's John Oliver blamed oil prices for the current chaos in Venezuela: "What is wrong with Venezuela? Well, the short answer is everything. The low price of oil, which accounts for 96 percent of Venezuela's exports, has triggered an economic collapse — causing massive inflation and shortages of food and medicine." While Oliver rightly mocked Venezuelan President…

Damon Linker, a self-described former “conservative intellectual” (he was an editor at First Things) believes that Hillary Clinton’s policy positions are “good enough” to earn the votes of current conservatives, given that a Donald Trump administration would pose a “national threat” and that most right-wing Hillary-hatred “lack[s] any rational connection to reality.” Take Hillary’s scandals --…

Even though Donald Trump is “dumb” and “racist,” he might constitute an upgrade in the Republican party’s leadership, suggests Rolling Stone’s Taibbi. That’s because before Trump turned into the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, the public faces of the party were “mean, traitorous scum.” Republicans, wrote Taibbi in the magazine’s June 2 issue, “dominated American political life for 50…

Three offensive elements pervaded the Associated Press's Monday coverage of Hillary Clinton's statement that she will put her husband "in charge of revitalizing the economy." The first was how AP reporters Lisa Lerer and Catherin Lucey decided to resurrect the infamous "2-for-1 offer" then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton campaigned on in 1992 — an especially weak move, given its real-world…

Superheroes are so last year. In 2016, cannibalism is all the rage. The Cannes film festival is where everyone who’s anyone in the film industry goes to show off their latest flick and fashion. This year, reporters noted that one on-screen theme seemed oddly prevalent: cannibalism.

Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton believes we're supposed to be impressed by the idea of putting her husband Bill, in the Associated Press's words, "in charge of revitalizing the economy." Yep, the old "2-for-1" offer from the early 1990s is back. In 1993, President Bill put First Lady Hill in charge of health care. Fortunately, nothing tangible resulted, but we did get an…

CNBC anchor Joe Kernen tore into the prospect of a socialist president, and knocked young people who he said had a warped view of Bernie Sanders. Kernen’s comments came in response to a report by political correspondent John Harwood on the democratic presidential race. In his report, Harwood featured a poll that had Sanders losing to Clinton by 14 percentage points.

In mid-April, as I noted in a NewsBusters post, the Associated Press, apparently desperate to find any kind of good economic news that might offset the impact of an awful national industrial production report from the Federal Reserve, cited a positive manufacturing survey from just one state to claim that "goods production in the U.S. could be stabilizing." Lo and behold, yesterday that same one…

The establishment press has given an open mic to proponents of raising the minimum wage nationally, and has cheered $15-per-hour legislation passed in California and New York earlier this year as "historic." The silence from those same quarters, e.g., the Associated Press, the New York Times and others, is deafening now that one of the predictions of those who have criticized such sharp…

During an interview with the stars of the Hollywood’s latest anti-capitalist screed, Money Monster, on Friday’s NBC Today, correspondent Keir Simmons summed up the plot of the film: “In the movie, [George] Clooney is forced to wear an explosive vest by British rising star Jack O'Connell. Who lost his dead mother's money on stocks.” Simmons noted: “This guy is a terrorist, who you end up feeling…

CNBC anchors Joe Kernen and Michelle Caruso Cabrera poked fun at socialism, saying it equalized results, but made everything worse. Cabrera said on Squawk Box May 12, that socialism brought about “equal suffering,” while Kernen similarly remarked that it represented “equally-shared misery.”

In an analysis for the front page of Wednesday’s New York Times business section, Eduardo Porter trumpeted that the real issue ailing the American economy and impeding on its improvement is the lack of mass government jobs programs similar to its “large and underappreciated role in reshaping” the country during the 19th and 20th centuries. 

In case you didn't get the message the first or second time around, the Washington Post wants you to hear it again: Cool your complaints about the weak U.S. economy, because it's your fault. To be clear, the problem is primarily with the Post's headline — "The economy’s real drag: Us" — than with Robert J. Samuelson's content, which at least gave American consumers credit for having "sobered up…