Recession

The media will never let a disaster – or a favorable (to them) election – go to waste. So the last month has been propitious for them. Combine Hurricane Sandy and the presidential election with the looming fiscal cliff, and the media have the perfect opportunity to push for a carbon tax. The New York Times claimed that “economists of diverse viewpoints concur that if the international…

CNBC’s Jim Cramer predicted a possible recession by Christmas if lawmakers didn’t step up and make some sort of deal in regards to the looming fiscal cliff. His prediction came during an Nov. 11 appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We can gift wrap a recession by Christmas. We can set it right into place without some agreement,” Cramer told “Meet the Press” host David Gregory. He attributed…

Last Friday, in his first post-election remarks on PBS and NPR, New York Times columnist David Brooks downplayed his usual bash- conservatives  narrative, and actually castigated liberals for wanting to go over the looming fiscal cliff.  He said that liberals are more organized, they’ve won the election, and will get most of what they yearn for if we do go over the waterfall: increased revenue…

On the Nov. 5 edition of CNBCs “Squawk Box,” former CEO of GE Jack Welch guest hosted and did not shy away from his opinions of the current administration. Welch emphasized the great opportunity America has with natural gas and how some of Obama’s proposed green energy bills pose a great threat to the economy. One of those big threats, according to Welch, is the Ozone regulations bill, which…

On the Nov. 2 edition of CNBCs “Squawk on the Street,” former chief economic advisor to George W. Bush and Hoover Fellow Ed Lazear commented that today’s jobs report may not be as good as the Obama administration and media make it out to be. “You have to think about how much do you need to keep employment constant as a proportion of the population,” he stated.

On Thursday, I wrote a piece exposing several factual errors in Andrew Sullivan's recent love letter to President Obama. Sullivan responded hours later:

The Associated Press, Bloomberg and Reuters all eagerly told readers today that the seasonally adjusted annualized level of single-family home sales in September of 389,000 was the highest in 2-1/2 years and really, really good news for the housing market, the economy as a whole, or both. What they all "somehow" failed to mention was the fact that sales are still far below where they were…

In their third Presidential debate analysis, the Jurassic Press Media last night and thus far this morning have failed utterly in their role as fact checker and record-corrector - at least when it comes to what President Barack Obama had to say.  As but one glaring example, there were the President’s absurd assertions regarding the auto bailout and China.

He clearly doesn't suffer from a shortage of chutzpah. According to the Politico's Josh Gerstein, President Barack Obama was asked the following question by The View's Barabara Walters in a Monday appearance to be broadcast on Tuesday: "What would be so terrible if Mitt Romney were elected? Would it be disastrous for the country?" His response: "We can survive a lot. But the American people…

The media's ongoing contribution to the Obama reelection effort is fairly obvious: omit or downplay news stories and polling data that cast the Obama administration in a negative light while hyping trivial Romney gaffes or media-manufactured tempests-in-teapots in order to focus the election narrative on the Republican candidate's deficiencies - real or or imagined -- rather than the incumbent…

Liberal Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward appeared on the September 17 C-SPAN program Washington Journal to hawk his new book The Price of Politics. In the process, Woodward promoted the same stale narrative that compromise is dead in Washington mostly because of those rascally, conservative Republicans, but sought to import a fair measure of melodrama to the stalemate in…

In his Jackson Hole, Wyoming presentation today, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, as reported by Paul Wiseman at the Associated Press, made the following claim in connection with the Fed's programs of "quantitative easing" (QE): "Bernanke argued Friday that collectively, such measures have succeeded. He cited research showing that two rounds of QE (quantitative easing) had created 2…

Sam Youngman at Reuters, and several others have attempted to pounce on a comment about "big business" GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney made at a Minnesota fundraiser on Thursday as some kind of equivalent to President Obama's out-of-touch assertion that "the private sector is doing fine" back in June. In fact, what Romney actually said in large part explains why the private sector isn'…

An unbylined Associated Press item late this morning told us that, according to AAA, "Thirty three million people will travel 50 miles or more during Labor Day weekend," which will be "the highest level of travel for Labor Day since the start of the recession in late 2007." But it won't be, as will be revealed in the AAA-sourced graphic found at Page 3 of its 36-page report (large PDF) seen…