Economy

In early 2008, Barack Obama annoyed many liberals when he said that President Reagan (but not President Clinton) had “changed the trajectory of America.” New York magazine’s Chait no doubt will irritate many conservatives by suggesting Obama has done the same over the past seven-plus years. In a piece for the March 21 issue, Chait commented, “Obama hasn’t so much moved from the center to the left…

Today's report on February's new-home sales from the Census Bureau showed seasonally adjusted declines in three of the nation's four regions and an increase in the West. The Associated Press and reporter Josh Boak, displaying brazenness which might have even embarrassed the scribes at Pravda during the worst days of the Soviet Union, concentrated on how great things were in the West in their…

Ridicule by media critics has apparently made some headway against the business press's annoying habit of describing bad news about the economy as having occurred "unexpectedly." Now they seem to be reserving the "U-word" for unexpected improvements, which haven't been seen very much during the past seven-plus years. Instead, reacting to today's bad news from the National Association of Realtors…

During a report promoting U.S. companies expanding business in Cuba, correspondent Margaret Brennan also lamented a downside: “Cuba remains one of the few countries in the world left virtually untapped by American corporations due to the long running trade embargo....But visitors like Manuel Leone fear that an influx of big businesses will endanger Cuba's unique charm.”

Plenty of conservatives would concur with Daily Kos writer Mark Sumner that Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is a fascist. They certainly would not agree with Sumner’s belief that the GOP as a whole has become increasingly aligned with fascism “since at least 1994.” Sumner contended in a Sunday article that beginning in “the time of the Gingrich,” Republicans “realized they could…

There was a serious case of selective amnesia induced by liberal bias on Thursday's CNN Newsroom as host Carol Costello oddly complained about women voters having labels like "soccer moms" and "welfare queens" applied to them while men supposedly escape such labeling. But just barely a week ago on her show, Costello herself asked about "angry white men" supporting Donald Trump.

The government's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that consumer prices fell 0.2 percent in February. Lower prices should be good news, right? Wrong, at least according to Martin Crutsinger at the Associated Press. Crutsinger's Wednesday dispatch also managed to ignore the fact that even the supposedly low inflation seen during the past 12 months has eaten up most of workers' very…

In a Monday afternoon post which gets close to taking pleasure in the serious economic decline in the heart of the coal mining industry in West Virginia, CNN Money's Patrick Gillespie observed, based on Hillary Clinton's recent remarks about coal miners' jobs, that she "has no love for coal companies." But in Gillespie's world, what Mrs. Clinton said doesn't matter, because "Clinton won't have…

The business press's determination to convince the public that weak economic news is really strong seemingly knows no bounds. Today, shortly after the Federal Reserve's Industrial Production report for February showed a seasonally adjusted 0.5 percent decline — worse than expectations of -0.3 percent — the Associated Press pretended in its headline and in reporter Christopher Rugaber's first…

Many left-wingers still insist that supporters of Donald Trump are conservatives, but Washington Monthly blogger David Atkins finds Trump backers “far less terrifying” than staunch right-wingers. In a Sunday post, Atkins opined that even though Trump’s base voters tend to be mean and “ignorant,” movement conservatives are “more morally objectionable” because they believe in “economic royalism.”…

Today's report from the government on February's retail sales was awful. Last month's sales fell by 0.1 percent, which was bad enough. Beyond that, January's originally reported 0.2 percent increase was revised down to a 0.4 percent decrease. Additionally, as I noted at my home blog this morning, January's seasonally adjusted revision should have been much worse, based on how terrible that month'…

These days, one of the biggest meta-debates in politics concerns apportioning blame for the staying power of the Donald Trump circus. How much of Trump’s popularity is attributable to, say, the mainstream media? To conservative talk radio? In a Sunday post, The Washington Monthly’s Martin Longman pointed the finger at Republicans and absolved President Obama. Apropos of Trump’s economically…

Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. apparently got on the good side of the Associated Press a year ago when it announced that would be raising entry-level wages. Since that announcement, AP, in particular wire service reporter Anne D'Innocenzio, has been excusing the company's relatively poor financial performance while complimenting it for a virtually imaginary "perk up" in sales. Falling profits…

Michael Lind thinks that movement conservatives are becoming a minor force in American politics, supplanted less by liberal Democrats than by what might be called Trump Republicans. In a Wednesday article for Politico, Lind contended that growing “populist discontent” is bringing about “the gradual replacement of Buckley-Goldwater-Reagan conservatism by something more like European national…