Stimulus

The world's financial markets had a terrible Monday. The debt crisis in Greece (population: 11 million) has been dominating the headlines and the press's attention, while serious deterioration in China (population: 1.36 billion) is getting short shrift. It isn't just that the mainland Chinese stock market has broken the bear-market decline threshold of 20 percent in less than three weeks,…

The business press has gotten really excited about the possibility — some of them are even treating it as a probability — that the first-quarter's recently reported annualized economic contraction of 0.7 percent will go positive if it gets revised for so-called "residual seasonality." "Residual seasonality" is "the manifestation of seasonal patterns in data that have already been seasonally…

On Tuesday, Associated Press reporter Martin Crutsinger celebrated the federal government's large April budget surplus, caused by "a flood of tax payments (which) pushed government receipts to an all-time high." He didn't mention that the tax payments were higher largely because of tax increases passed in 2013. It certainly didn't occur because of an improving economy — because it's not…

On May 1, the Associated Press's Paul Wiseman was pleased to tell the wire service's readers and subscribing outlets that "The University of Michigan's sentiment index rose to 95.9 from 93 in March," reaching "its second-highest level since 2007." Among other things, the survey's chief economist said that the result reflected "improving prospects for jobs and incomes." What a difference two…

Japan just reported yet another awful retail sales result. Though it far exceeeded predictions of a 7.3 percent fall, the 9.7 percent March 2015 plunge compared to March 2014 doesn't reveal much, as March 2014 saw a splurge at the stores ahead of a steep sales tax increase which took effect on April 1. The really telling figure is the 1.9 percent seasonally adjusted dive compared to February.…

Today's Census Bureau report on durable goods orders was like a poorly made cake with delicious frosting: tasty at first, but awful when fully experienced. The frosting in today's report was that overall orders increased in March by a seasonally adjusted 4.0 percent. The trouble is that an important, widely recognized element of that report — what the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger vaguely…

So when is a recession not a genuine recession? Apparently when it's "technical." Unfortunately, the term "technical recession" appears to be well on the way to devolving into what has long been considered the real definition of a recession for the purpose of discounting its validity.

Late Monday afternoon, the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger produced a typically dodgy dispatch on the government's Monthly Treasury Statement. The Treasury Department released the March version of that report covering the first six months of the current fiscal year early Monday afternoon. The odd thing is, while it has been published elsewhere at the web sites of certain of its subscribers…

Imagine if a Republican or conservative U.S. president told an audience — on foreign soil, no less — that he didn't properly warn Americans about how long it would take for the economy to recover from a recession. "So-and-so Admits He Lied About the Economy" would be headlined everywhere. At the University of the West Indies in Jamaica on Thursday, President Barack Obama essentially admitted…

Chickens came home to roost yesterday at the Associated Press. The AP, the economy's most consistent cheerleader when a Democrat is in office, has not only been ignoring and downplaying the significance of disappointing and negative reports for several months, pinning its claim that all is well on the streak of seasonally adjusted 200,000-plus job gains seen during the past 12 months. It has…

Apparently, the sheer number of weak to awful economic reports seen during the past month or so finally led Josh Boak at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, to acknowledge that "critical pieces of the economy remain troubled almost six years into the recovery." Boak's belated timing is interesting, to say the least, given that the Federal Reserve is weighing whether or not to…

The only surprise should be that anyone is surprised. Those who are used to how frequently the word "unexpectedly" appears in reports about disappointing economic data certainly won't be at all shocked at a Friday Bloomberg News report by Steve Matthews and A. Catarina Saraiva telling readers that "U.S. economic data have been falling short of prognosticators' expectations by the most in six…

The federal government today reported a $17.5 billion budget deficit for January. That brings this fiscal year's shortfall through four months to $194.2 billion, up from $182.8 billion during the same period last year. As usual, the Associated Press's coverage, this time delivered by Martin Crutsinger, named the nation's "Worst Economic Writer" by National Review's Kevin Williamson two years ago…