Bloomberg

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…

As has been its habit during the Obama administration when the economy turns in a poor performance, the press's coverage of yesterday's report on U.S. economic growth focused on how much better next quarter's news will supposedly be. Especially in this instance, the beat reporters and pundits should have looked at whether or not yesterday's initial result will hold up, or whether it's likely to…

Being a conservative got you down? Maybe people are looking at you weird? Not holding the elevator when they see you running up? Co-workers preventing you from being copied on all those invites to office parties? Voters trying to keep you from being enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame?

This week, NewsBusters is presenting the Media Research Center’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2015,” our annual awards for the year’s worst journalism. Today, the “Harsh to the Huddled Masses” award, for attacks on the GOP candidates for their supposed hostility to immigration. Winning the trophy: Yahoo! News anchor Katie Couric for suggesting to GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz that he lacked “…

The business press worships at the altar of seasonally adjusted data. Most journalists covering the economy don't even bother looking at raw, not seasonally adjusted data, which in layman's terms is best understood as "what actually happened." As I have shown for nearly a decade, this is often a big mistake. On the rare occasions when reporters take the initiative to look at the raw data, they…

Reuters and reporter Lucia Mutikani went way overboard today in reacting to today's residential construction news from the Census Bureau. Mutikani's headline contended that today's "housing data signals economic strength," while a section title claimed that there are "strong housing fundamentals." That can only possibly be true if one believes the world began in 2007.

Climate skeptics don’t exist, according to actor, activist and socialist sympathizer Sean Penn. They’re just cult followers of Fox news programming.

Gosh, this gets tiresome. Once again, with one noteworthy exception, the business press's virtually blind acceptance of seasonally adjusted economic data, and its accompanying refusal to look at the underlying raw data, led it to paint a deceptive picture of an important element of the economy. This time, it was existing home sales for October. The seasonally adjusted annual rate for October…

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…

On Thursday, the government reported that the nation's economy turned in yet another quarter of poor economic performance, estimating that its gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 1.5 percent in the third quarter. The business press almost universally downplayed the news, and told readers that the fourth quarter will be better. No one talked about how much the tepid growth of the…

The news coming out of Detroit about near-deadline negotiations between the United Auto Workers union and General Motors has been pretty quiet. As the Sunday 11:59 p.m. deadline approaches, the Associated Press only has a four-paragraph blurb indicating that the union wants to get a richer package than it just garnered in negotiations with Fiat Chrysler. A Reuters report goes into detail about GM…

During a discussion with Bloomberg Politics editor Mark Halperin on Tuesday’s NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie touted how Hillary Clinton had “set the table” for her testimony before the Benghazi Committee on Thursday. Halperin proclaimed: “This appearance has been looming on her calendar and her staff’s calendar with dread, thinking this could be the worst day of the year for her. It could…

Appearing as a panel member on Sunday's Up show on MSNBC, Bloomberg View columnist and MSNBC political analyst Jonathan Alter, picking up on what he called "one of Donald Trump's great contributions to this campaign," contended President Bush deserved blame for not stopping the 9/11 attacks as he recounted a vague warning from August 2001 that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack the U.S. He further…

Another Hollywood liberal infatuated by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Actress Jill Hennessy, best-known for starring roles in NBC’s Law & Order and Crossing Jordan, hailed Hillary Clinton: “I just think she has accomplished more than most people accomplish in about five lifetimes.” But she was quick to also trumpet Bernie Sanders: “I find him really inspiring. I think he’s tremendous.”