Economy

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to the recovery this week: The U.S. Department of Labor reported on Thursday that initial claims for unemployment benefits jumped "unexpectedly" by 36,000 to 482,000, when analysts had predicted a slight drop. What's more, it turns out that data reported in previous weeks was understated because of "administrative issues" relating to paperwork processing…

The news media have often taken President Barack Obama's side against banks, portraying bankers as the villains. But that was not the case on "American Morning" Jan. 22. Business correspondent Christine Romans surprisingly blamed the previous day's stock market slide on "tough new rules" proposed by Obama the same day. According to CNN, Obama wants to limit the size of banks, separate commercial…

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Americans were treated to a number of populist sermons on the "special interests" who would oppose "reform" at any cost to maintain the "status quo" from which they "profit financially or politically." The drug companies, the energy companies, the Wall Street bankers, and the health insurers were the corporate enemies of a just and harmonious America, or so…

Since Republican Scott Brown won the special election Jan 19 to fill Massachusetts' U.S. Senate seat vacated after the death of Ted Kennedy, President Barack Obama and high-level White House staffers David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs have been on the media circuit in damage control mode. But according to "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace, efforts to spin this in a positive way are futile.…

Liberal billionaire investor Warren Buffett has been very popular among the news media, but that might not hold if Buffett continues to dissent from President Barack Obama. On Jan. 20, Bloomberg reported that Buffett opposed Obama's proposal to tax a number of large banks supposedly to pay for losses from the bank bailout. "I don't see any reason why they should be paying a special tax," said…

When you breach the sacrosanct wall between church and state, and use religion to promote policy, bad things happen. At least, that's what the left has been telling us for years. But Rev. Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine and author of "Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street and Your Street," sees it differently. Wallis used his interpretation of religion,…

Last night, after Scott Brown took one of the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seats, there was a call by some in the media and even among some prominent Democrats to modulate by shifting away from the so-called "far left." One might think a start would be to tone down some of the rhetoric, take a step back and consider retooling the strategy, instead of lobbing more bombs. But the Democratic…

Last week, in his "analysis" of Barack Obama's proposed "bank responsibility fee," the Associated Press's Jim Kuhnhenn got one important thing right and two others very wrong.The part he got right was describing the proposed fee as a "tax." The first thing he got wrong was identifying the proposed move as a legitimate form of "populism." The second is his claim that the idea is "straight out of '…

President Obama returned to populist rhetoric Jan. 14 when he announced a $90 billion tax on roughly 50 large banks, supposedly to recoup "every single dime" of the TARP dollars used to rescue the financial sector. Nevermind that a number of those banks including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley already repaid their TARP debts with interest and were forced to take the money in…

Former Barack Obama supporter Jim Cramer on Friday said the stock market would have a huge rally if Scott Brown defeats Martha Coakley in Tuesday's special senatorial election in Massachusetts."I think investors who are nervous about the dictatorship of the Pelosi proletariat will feel at ease, and we could have a gigantic rally off a Coakley loss and a Brown win," said Cramer on Friday's "Mad…

The Federal Reserve of Minneapolis has posted a series of charts (HT Ed Morrissey at Hot Air) comparing the current recession -- as defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research, not as normal people define it, a point I'll get to later in this post -- to previous recessions dating back to the end of World War II. The charts definitely show how utterly wrong reporters like the Associated…

Okay, who administered the truth serum to the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger? And will the person who did this kindly inform us when it will wear off? On Thursday, for the second day in a row following a mostly fact-based report the previous day on Uncle Sam's horrid fiscal situation, Crutsinger ran down a troubling economic report. This time it was December's disappointing retail sales…

In his coverage of yesterday's Monthly Treasury Statement from Uncle Sam, the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger, who I have criticized frequently for cruddy reporting, especially on federal finances, did a pretty good job reporting key facts and conveying very real concerns that are brewing over the country's current fiscal path. In the process, he made a stunning admission about the economy's…

In an unfortunate choice of articles, MSNBC earlier had a featured set of headlines in their politics section regarding the stimulus package and its effect on the troubled job market. One article touts the recent White House claim that the stimulus package had saved 2 million jobs.But the other article explains why a new method of accounting adopted by the White House will make it "impossible to…