Bloomberg

Appearing on NBC’s Today on Friday, Bloomberg Politics editor Mark Halperin offered a laughably naive explanation for Bill Clinton’s controversial meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch: “The most obvious explanation and probably the right one, is Bill Clinton is a really social guy...” He cast Clinton and Lynch as celebrities who just ran into each other: “And we’ve all seen situations…

On Thursday morning in Shanghai, Walt Disney Company Chairman Bob Iger and “a phalanx of Chinese Communist Party officials” cut the ribbon on the $5.5 billion Shanghai Disney Resort, the company's first theme park in mainland China. The celebration included fireworks over the resort's castle -- Disney's "largest and most technologically advanced castle in the world” -- a dancing Mickey Mouse,…

In case you didn't get the message the first or second time around, the Washington Post wants you to hear it again: Cool your complaints about the weak U.S. economy, because it's your fault. To be clear, the problem is primarily with the Post's headline — "The economy’s real drag: Us" — than with Robert J. Samuelson's content, which at least gave American consumers credit for having "sobered up…

Almost any time a government agency or program fails to perform, those involved complain that they don't have enough money to properly do their jobs. Unless the matter involves national defense, the press gullibly swallows their contentions. The Transportation Safety Administration is the latest case in point. Lines at airport security checkpoints are already getting noticeably longer, and we…

With the Indiana primary a day away the liberal media is franticly pushing the narrative that Ted Cruz is going to lose and Donald Trump is destined to be the nominee. “It's hard to think of Ted Cruz as a human being in the same week when Boehner called him Lucifer,” smeared Nicolle Wallace on Bloomberg’s With All Due Respect. Co-host of the show John Heilemann declared Indiana was the end of…

That the establishment press despises New Media isn't exactly breaking news, but a lesser-known subset of that tension has just become more visible. As usual, an Old Media outlet is the smear merchant, and the New Media site has the upper hand on the truth. Mainstream business journalists really despise the financial and economics blogs which puncture the insufferable "the economy is just fine"…

Venezuela's hyperinflationary economic crisis has gotten worse in one very important and apparently unprecedented sense than even the one seen in Weimar Germany in the 1920s. Yet the Associated Press and the New York Times apparently have no interest in telling their readers, listeners or viewers about it. In the post-World War I German Weimar Republic, the situation became so out of control…

Just in time for tomorrow's first-quarter economic growth announcement from the government, Bloomberg Businessweek's Economics Editor is telling readers: "Don't Sweat America's Upcoming Microscopic GDP Growth." Besides, Peter Coy writes, people need to get used to the supposedly inescapable fact that "Normal growth for the U.S. economy is just a lot lower than it used to be." Americans shouldn't…

Today's stories at the business wires covering this morning's disastrous durable goods report from the Census Bureau ranged from good to absolutely horrid. March orders only increased by a seasonally adjusted 0.8 percent, less than half of the 1.7 percent to 2.0 percent increase that was expected. Additionally, February's originally reported decline of 2.8 percent was revised down to -3.1 percent…

In another blow to the U.S. and worldwide economy, chipmaker Intel announced today that it is reducing its worldwide workforce by 12,000 people, a cut of 11 percent. Of course, there are tech-related reasons why the company made the move, most notably the shift by some users to tablets and smartphones, where the company's market penetration has been weak and almost non-existent, respectively, as…

The government reported this morning that seasonally adjusted March housing starts and building permits fell by 8.8 percent and 7.7 percent, respectively, far worse declines than analysts and economists predicted. After the report, the business wires at least communicated the facts accurately, but continued to insist almost to the point of editorializing that there's no reason to be worried…

Today's report from the government on retail sales was awful — "unexpectedly" so, according to both Bloomberg and Reuters. Following on the heels of a 0.4 percent seasonally adjusted decline in January and a flat February, March sales fell by 0.3 percent. Two of the three main U.S. business wire services blamed the American people, not the worst post-recession economy since World War II during…

In a variation on a popular saying in real estate — "The three most important factors are location, location and location" — the State of Connecticut, since Democrat Dannel Malloy became Governor five years ago, has employed three strategies to balance its budget: raising taxes, raising taxes, and raising taxes. The Nutmeg State's next planned round of tax increases includes a proposal pushed by…

For the past month, the conventional wisdom about the U.S. economy has been that consumer spending and "(not really) robust" job growth will continue to prop up the economy, even as weaknesses in manufacturing, trade and other areas continue to present problems. President Obama bragged in early March that the economy is "pretty darned good now." Today, the first of those two pillars got pulled.…