Wages & Prices

The establishment press often pays a price in lost credibility when it ignores important economic reports. The original omission is bad enough, of course. But when subsequent business coverage makes assertions which the ignored reports directly refute, it leaves you wondering why you should even try to believe anything they compose. Such is the case with Martin Crutsinger's report today on…

Let me preface this by saying that I really appreciate everybody's response on the soapbox every week, whether they be pro or con. I certainly don't expect everybody to agree with my opinion. I rarely respond to the comments made unless I have, what I feel, is a very important and specific reason for doing so.

Making an absurd declaration on Friday's NBC Today, chief medical editor Nancy Snyderman asserted that the oppressive regime in Saudi Arabia was fairer to working women than the United States: "We still make 77 cents to the dollar as men. It's ridiculous. In a country like Saudi Arabia, where we question their rights, it's against the law to pay women less than men." [Listen to the audio or…

NPR's Tamara Keith forwarded the "war on women" talking point of Democratic senators on Tuesday's All Things Considered as she reported on their proposed Paycheck Fairness Act. Keith spotlighted how "the bill's author...Senator Barbara Mikulski from Maryland, points out women earn just 77 cents for every dollar made by a man in the same position. She says that's the real war on women."…

Readers are strongly advised to remove food, fluids, and flammables from proximity to their computers prior to reading any further. You've been warned! New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said on ABC's This Week Sunday, "It's terribly unfair that [President Obama is] being judged on the failure of the economy to respond to policies that had been largely dictated by a hostile Congress" (…

It must be campaign season. Fact-checking gurus are rating accurate statements by the Romney campaign as "Mostly False" or "Half True" or – the best – "True but False," since they're correct but they apparently don't tell the whole story. However, when President Obama made a factually-incorrect statement last week, he did not receive a "False" rating from the website PolitiFact, but…

It's difficult to be a good economist and simultaneously be perceived as compassionate. To be a good economist, one has to deal with reality. To appear compassionate, often one has to avoid unpleasant questions, use "caring" terminology and view reality as optional. Affordable housing and health care costs are terms with considerable emotional appeal that politicians exploit but have…

The front of the New York Times Sunday Business section featured Natasha Singer article under the headline "A Rich Game of Thrones – C.E.O. Pay Gains May Have Slowed, But the Numbers Are Still Numbing," which hit the reliably liberal crowdpleaser, the pay of chief executives. The issue has long been an awkward topic at the New York Times Co.Publisher Arthur Sulzberger earned bonus pay in the…

Zbigniew Brzezinki's indictment of the United States was so harsh—calling America "one of the most socially unjust societies in the world"—that even his own daughter Mika was taken aback, asking her father to explain himself. But that didn't stop Andrea Mitchell from emphatically agreeing with Zbigniew Brzezinki's condemnation of the USA.  In the course of doing so, Mitchell called the Tea…

For conservatives, one of the bright spots of the Occupy Wall Street protests was when millionaire investor Peter Schiff went down to Zuccotti Park with video camera and a sign reading "I Am The 1% - Let's Talk." On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of speaking with Schiff by telephone in a sweeping interview about his experience at OWS, how the financial media are doing, and ending with his rather…

On Friday's Inside Washington on PBS, regular panel member Nina Totenberg of NPR incorrectly claimed that the "top tenth of one percent" of income earners in America "controls something like 20 or 30 percent" of the nation's income, and went on to characterize the economic situation as being worse than it has been in "hundreds of years," as she suggested income gaps were at a level that "people…

It's hard to figure out why Tom Krisher at the Associated Press bothered filing a report on the status of contract talks between Detroit's Big 3 automakers and the United Auto Workers. The only reason I can discern is that he wanted to brag about how he and his wire service pals have access to anonymously-sourced info about how the talks are going. Surprise: As has been the case almost always…

Charles Krauthammer on Fox News's "Special Report" Friday offered Republicans a 2012 campaign slogan to defeat Barack Obama. "President Zero: zero economic expansion, zero jobs, zero ideas on how to cure the economy" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

ABC Highlights Complaints That 'There is Little Heart' in Rick Perry's Texas On Saturday's World News on ABC, correspondent Jim Avila filed a report in which he focused mostly on aspects of Texas's economy that receive praise, but he ended up warning that things may not really be as good as they seem, as the ABC correspondent highlighted claims that, "deep in the heart of Rick Perry's Texas…