AP: U.S. Economy Started 2016 'With a Bang'

Tom Blumer
February 29th, 2016 2:07 PM
At the Associated Press, in a Friday morning writeup, the wire service's headline writers and reporter Martin Crutsinger demonstrated extraordinary auditory powers. The headline writers somehow heard the entire U.S. economy start the year off "with a bang." Meanwhile, Crutsinger, continuing to earn his designated title of "worst economics writer" given by Kevin Williamson at National Review…
 

AP: Japan's Economy Shrank Again, Despite 'Lavish' Stimulus

Tom Blumer
February 17th, 2016 3:26 PM

It seems that no degree of exposure to the real world can destroy journalists' belief in Keynesian economic — not even the two decades-plus calamity in Japan. The Japanese economy has contracted again. According to a report at the Associated Press early Monday morning by an apparently perplexed Elaine Kurtenbach, this occurred despite — not because of — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "lavish…

 

Not News: January's Raw Job Losses Were the Third-Worst on Record

Tom Blumer
February 9th, 2016 8:56 AM
On Friday, in its January Employment Situation Summary, the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics served up a stack of lemons disguised as lemonade. President Barack Obama declared in a tweet that "We've recovered from the worst economic crisis since the 1930s," and the press dutifully fell in line. The BLS reported that the economy added seasonally adjusted 151,000 payroll jobs and that the…
 

Bloomberg Writer: 'Economic Growth Isn't Everything'

Tom Blumer
January 30th, 2016 11:56 PM
Observers can be excused for thinking that the politicial establishment is preparing the battlespace to convince us plebes that progress and economic growth are overrated. (That's sort of odd for people who call themselves "progressives," but making sense is not their strong suit.) How interesting, for example, that Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon's book, The Rise and Fall of…
 

AP: Fed May Pause Increases, Only Because of 'Darker Global Economy'

Tom Blumer
January 25th, 2016 5:28 PM
Over the past several months, economics reporters at the Associated Press have told us time and time and time again that the U.S. economy is "largely insulated" from adverse economic developments overseas. So why is the AP's Martin Crutsinger going along with the now-shifting conventional "wisdom" that Janet Yellen's Federal Reserve may have to defer implementing additional interest-rate…
 

With Worse Data Than a Decade Ago, AP Says No Recession 'Anytime Soon'

Tom Blumer
January 18th, 2016 12:10 PM
During the middle years of last decade, the business press, including the Associated Press, worked the word "recession" into its reports on the economy quite regularly. Yesterday, despite a current economy facing far worse fundamentals than were seen during 2007, the AP's Paul Wiseman and Bernard Condon gave us a nearly 882-word treatise on "WHY GLOBAL WOES AND SINKING STOCKS DON'T MEAN US…
 

AP Blames World for Stocks' Dive; CNBC Scribe Warns: 'Worse Than '08'

Tom Blumer
January 17th, 2016 9:33 AM
The Associated Press's coverage of Friday's deep U.S. stock market dive in two Friday afternoon reports engaged in the reality avoidance longtime readers here have come to expect. An item by Stan Choe ("Get used to it: Big drops for stocks are back again") spent most of its verbiage on "volatility," and only cited "China's sharp economic slowdown ... Tensions in the Middle East ... the plunge in…
 

Yahoo Reporter Won't Cite Awful U.S. Economic Data as Markets Tank

Tom Blumer
January 15th, 2016 5:14 PM
The press's fierce determination to avoid blaming any of the steep decline in this nation's stock markets so far this year on horrid U.S. economic data, or on the Obama administration which has given us such a sour economic environment, has gone way beyond annoying. Shortly after noon at Yahoo Finance, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average's Friday dive hit 500 points, Nicole Sinclair, who is also…
 

Hartmann: Food Stamps Among 'Best Ways' to Stimulate Economy

Jack Coleman
December 6th, 2015 8:34 PM
You're Definitely A Liberal When ... Assertion #7,546 -- You claim with a straight face that taxpayer-funded food stamps are wondrously stimulative for the economy.  It's been so long since this one crossed my path that I'd begun to believe it was too delusional even for the left.  But sure enough there it was, making its inevitable reappeance on Thom Hartmann's radio show last week. Perhaps…
 

AP: Japan Is in a Real Recession, But Trying to'Pump Up 'Recovery'

Tom Blumer
November 27th, 2015 11:24 PM

Twenty years of economic growth averaging less than 1 percent have failed to convince Japan's leaders — and apparently its citizens — that Keynesian-style government spending and handouts are not the answer to turning that long-suffering nation's economy around. So the Shinzo Abe government, fresh from learning that the country is in yet another recession — its fifth since 2008 — is doing more…

 

Reuters: 2 Percent Growth Is Economy's 'Long-Run Potential'

Tom Blumer
November 24th, 2015 6:32 PM
Call it the triumph of the "new normal." At Reuters today, after today's first revision of third-quarter gross domestic product showed that the economy grew by an annualized 2.1 percent, up from the late-October estimate of 1.5 percent, reporter Lucia Mutikani and Editor Paul Simao demonstrated that they have completely given in to the artificially lowered expectations of past seven miserable…
 

Japan in Recession Again, So the Answer Must Be Even More 'Stimulus'

Tom Blumer
November 16th, 2015 12:35 AM
Japan's two-decade romance with Keynesian economics has led to another betrayal — and yet the press and all the supposedly smart economists and analysts seem to believe that just one more fling might bring about a different result. The Land of the Rising Sun, aka the Land of the Two-Decade Zombie Economy, has just reported an annualized contraction of 0.8 percent in the third quarter. The…
 

AP Pair 'Fact Checks' an Achieved Goal and a Completely True Statement

Tom Blumer
November 12th, 2015 11:55 PM
The "fact-checking" press has become a parody of itself during the past several years. It's not only because of their irritating penchant for putting statements by Republicans and conservatives under a twisted microscope while ignoring drop-dead obvious falsehoods delivered by Democrats and leftists. It's because, among other things, the fact-checkers often admit that a statement is true, but…
 

Hey WSJ: Amnesty is the Hugest Cronyism of All

Seton Motley
November 9th, 2015 1:04 PM
The political definition of Cronyism is: government policy that favors one or more specific beneficiaries - at the expense of everyone else.  To wit: $80 billion of the 2009 “Stimulus” was wasted on “green energy” companies - 80% of whom were Barack Obama donors.  Amongst the parade of horribles contained therein: the government took money from energy companies - to fund competitors to their…