Stock Market

It's the kind of socialist attitude that would make Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez proud. Unfortunately, it's coming from a New York Times columnist making recommendations for the U.S. financial system. Times' columnist Paul Krugman appeared on MSNBC's Oct. 6 "Rachel Maddow Show" and made the prediction that the federal government would have to take over the American financial system after…

Updated below. Last Monday as the U.S. House of Representatives voted down the initial bailout package, both Fox News and CNN sent e-mail alert subscribers numerous alerts about the Dow's dive. The market recovered some the following day, a development that CNN neglected to mention in the same e-mail alerts. Yet today, with the bailout package having been passed and signed into law by the…

One of CNN's citizen reporters on their new iReport service caused a bit of panic for Apple's stock prices this week when one of those reports featured a false claim that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack. With rumors swirling the stock price fell until official news from Apple quashing the rumor calmed investors' fears.

You've got to love brutal honesty, especially when it comes from the financial media. The Senate's version of a bailout bill, which passed last night by a margin of 74-25, included "sweeteners" - or obscure tax breaks - including benefits for the manufacturer of wooden arrows used in children's toys and another for litigants in the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Melissa Francis, co-host of CNBC'…

While both CNN.com and FoxNews.com sent e-mail alert subscribers "breaking news" alerts on the Dow's steep slide yesterday in reaction to failure of the bailout package in the House of Representatives, CNN didn't think it worthy of a breaking news text to note the gains made today in the market.Here are the Fox News text messages sent on September 30 regarding the Dow Jones: DOW REGAINS NEARLY…

The shock and awe of the financial market meltdown is just beginning according to CNBC star Jim Cramer. Cramer on CNBC's Sept. 29 "Mad Money" cautioned viewers about the current market. His advice - do nothing because there's more pain to come if no rescue plan makes it out of Congress. As he put it: "sit on your hands." "Only those stocks that are sure enough to pull the trigger on until we…

The theory that bailout legislation recently defeated in the House of Representatives would make money for the federal government has been propagated by the financial media. But according to a recent report released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a profit is unlikely. The September 2008 report from the IMF stated the chances of the government recouping anything more than just a…

As I write this on Monday afternoon, the People's House has rejected "the $700 billion bailout." You won't believe, unless you're a very experienced cynic, where that $700 billion figure came from. The answer appears to be "out of nowhere." With no basis. I'm not kidding. Here's the evidence, carried six whole days ago at Forbes (HT LAT's Top of the Ticket Blog via BizzyBlog commenter Dan Scott…

CNN’s Web site this morning tracked a developing story involving the stock market opening, by featuring a photo of an Iran anti-war protest. The photo, provided by our friends at the AP, was simply too perfect to pass up apparently. After all, any photo which includes a man brandishing a banner which reads ‘Jail Bush,’ is something that a biased news organization simply has to take.…

NewsBusters is, of course, a site dedicated to exposing liberal bias in the press. But, once in a while the liberal press gets something right and this is one of those cases. On Spetember 20, Newsweek hosted an article by FactCheck.org that exposed the outright lies contained in the claims Barack Obama made against John McCain's record on Social Security in order to scare as many elder citizens…

Private CEOs? Yes. Government-sponsored CEOs? No. In a September 19 "Good Morning America" preview of a report scheduled to appear on the same day's edition of ABC's "20/20," chief investigative reporter Brian Ross took a few jabs at the rich who had fallen. Ross called it "the end of a shameful chapter of American history," and although top executives on Wall Street had been hit hard in…

Of course we all know that it's absolutely wrong and mean-spirited to suggest that anyone on the left could conceivably be unpatriotic [though an exception might be made for unrepentant terrorist friends of Barack Obama who accept from Vietnamese communists rings made from downed US planes.]  So while we won't be using the u-word here, two recent MSNBC shows offer a remarkable contrast. Let's…