Recession

With Eliot Spitzer gone, Chuck Schumer moves to the head of the list of smugly self-righteous New York pols. So it was particularly satisfying to see Sen. Jon Kyl [R-AZ] put Schumer is his place on This Week with George Stephanopoulos today. A guest with Kyl for purposes of discussing the economy, Schumer clearly came in with a game plan: to analogize President Bush to the man who presided over…

A recent AP story about 50-year-olds moving back into their parents homes because the economy is so bad is one of the best examples of taking anecdotal evidence and stretching it into a universal truth that I have seen for a while. Filled with the sadly common "many say" and all based on the tale of one person who moved back home at 52, the AP magically discerned a national trend. This is the…

"Good Morning America" economic reporter Bianna Golodryga narrated a segment on Tuesday's show that featured grainy black and white footage from the 1930s and two references to the Great Depression. The ABC journalist also featured clips from Democratic presidential contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to amplify the warnings of impending economic doom. While discussing the collapse of…

.... for what I believe is a painfully obvious reason. It is reports like the one written up by Shobhana Chandra at Bloomberg yesterday on household net worth that make you wonder if everyday US citizens will ever get the information needed to accurately evaluate what's going on in the economy without doing more digging than they have time for -- or that they should even have to do. Chandra's…

BMI Vice President Dan Gainor took to the Fox Business Network Thursday to explain the difference between "depression," "recession" and "slow growth," terms the mainstream media has blurred.Economists "don't even agree that we're in a recession yet," Gainor said. "But then if you watch the network news shows, we're already up to eight times this year - that's once a week where they've made a…

Nothing like the cheery decade of the 1970s - disco dancing, "Animal House," Farrah Fawcett and the buzz word reincarnated by the media - stagflation. After a disappointing spike in inflation, the producer price index (PPI), by 1.0 percent in January, and a rise in core inflation (with food and energy costs excluded), rising 0.4 percent on Tuesday, the media have deemed it necessary to sound…

For years, NewsBusters and the Business and Media Institute have informed readers about how the press, since George W. Bush was first elected, have tried to create a self-fulfilling prophecy by misrepresenting economic data in as negative a way as possible.This is likely the cause of the public's continued pessimism about economic conditions even as the economy has expanded for 25 consecutive…

Vice President of the Business & Media Institute Dan Gainor outlined the media's failure in covering consumer confidence numbers in a February 15 appearance on the Fox Business Network."What we're talking about, instead of consumer confidence, we're talking about media competence," Gainor said. "Last year, July was the six-year high for consumer confidence and yet if you watch any one of the…

Just when you thought the economic doom and gloom couldn't get any worse in the news, "Good Morning America" has determined recession is now causing arson. "We have news this morning on the home foreclosure front, word that cash-strapped homeowners are taking desperate measures," ABC co-host Diane Sawyer said. The February 11 "GMA" has determined "cash-strapped homeowners" are taking "…

You reap what you sow. Nothing could be truer when it comes to the American economy. According to CNBC "Closing Bell" host Maria Bartiromo, if the media continue to push doom-and-gloom economy stories, they will make the economy worse. "[T]he truth is, ["Today" co-anchor] Meredith [Vieira], it doesn't matter if we're in a recession," Bartiromo said on NBC's February 6 "Today." "We can talk…

Two weeks and two rate cuts later, CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer has a revived faith in the U.S. stock market. On January 18, Cramer appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and warned if the government didn't intervene and prevent the failure of two large insurance companies, Ambac and MBIA, the Dow Jones Industrial Average would drop 2,000 points in the upcoming weeks. Cramer…