Bloomberg

Just before Labor Day, Wal-Mart taught a lesson in Economics 101. The consequences of Wal-Mart’s decision to raise employee wages are becoming apparent and even the wage-hike promoting liberal news media has had to report it. Bloomberg Businessweek reported that Wal-Mart’s labor costs had soared by $1 billion after raising hourly wages to $9 in April and committing to additional training. In…

This blog brought to you by Orville Redenbacher . . . One short segment on today's With All Due Respect packed plenty of explosive commentary.  There was John Heilemann saying that Al Gore "hates" Hillary and that if he gets in the race would be a "huge" problem for her. Lending credence to Heilemann's "hates" claim is the fact that he mentioned having "spent a lot of time" with Gore in 2006.  …

Gracing the cover of August’s Bloomberg Businessweek was a smiling, daisy-garlanded head of a billionaire tycoon that suggested he is a “feminist icon.” That tycoon was the “Oracle of Omaha” and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway himself: Warren Buffett, a huge donor to birth control, and the abortion industry through his Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. The magazine devoted a four-page spread to the…

The bar-lowering in the business press continues. In the wake of today's disappointing news from the government on U.S. economic growth, an email from CNNMoney.com failed to properly describe reported second-quarter growth, and falsely characterized today's results as "solid":

Yet another important economic statistic confidently predicted to rise has fallen — hard. This time it was June's pending sales of existing homes. Just in time for summer, they were predicted to increase by a seasonally adjusted 1.0 percent to 1.5 percent. Instead they fell by 1.8 percent, the steepest drop since December 2013. Additionally, May's original 0.9 percent increase was revised down…

The Conference Board's July Consumer Confidence report released earlier today threw a heavy dose of cold water on the idea that the economy might finally achieve a broad-based, genuine recovery this year. Despite month after month of "all is well" reporting — and excuse-making when all hasn't been well — from the U.S. business press, the American public has apparently finally figured out that…

Thanks to year-over-year declines in manufacturing orders, manufacturing shipments, and wholesale sales, along with bloated inventories, apologists for the current condition of the U.S. economy are down to three defenses supposedly demonstrating that all is still really well after yet another rough first quarter (once again excused away as due to supposedly historically awful winter weather).…

In June, Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley unveiled a "climate change plan." The press loved it. Glowing articles appeared in many place, including the Washington Post, USA Today, The Hill and the Huffington Post, whose Kate Sheppard wrote that the former Maryland Governor had "Just Set An Extremely High Bar ... For 2016 Democratic Contenders." Well, if they're so wired into…

Has it come this? Conservatives need to rely on the liberal Mark Halperin to "follow up" on CNN's softball interviews with Hillary Clinton? Halperin grilled top Clinton adviser Jennifer Palmieri on a question the 2016 candidate ignored when she was on CNN. In early July, Brianna Keilar asked Clinton a question about deleting 30,000 e-mails. The Democrat didn't answer. On Wednesday, Halperin…

Nicholas Confessore and Maggie Haberman at the New York Times studiously avoided talking about Hillary Clinton's campaign spending in their front-page print edition story Thursday ("Hillary Clinton Lags in Engaging Grass-Roots Donors"). Mrs. Clinton hauled in $48.7 million, but she spent a stunning $18.7 million. As seen in a table accompanying the Times story, that's more than triple that of…

The serious sales slumps combined with inventory buildups in manufacturing and wholesale industries, documented in previous NewsBusters posts, continues. So does the establishment press's determination to ignore them. At the Associated Press today, Christopher Rugaber was tasked to cover the Federal Reserve's June release on Industrial Production. The good news is that the Fed report showed an…

As I was looking for news coverage of Thursday's horrid factory orders report from the Census Bureau late last week, I came across an incredibly optimistic Blomberg News report by Victoria Stilwell. The headline of her story on July 1, the day before that factory orders release, read: "Factories Making a Comeback as U.S. Domestic Demand Picks Up." My reaction: On what planet? It turns out that…

The media’s tendency to use the Pope to criticize Republican candidates and officials was on display Wednesday afternoon as MSNBC’s Live with Thomas Roberts and Bloomberg’s With All Due Respect took shots at the 2016 GOP presidential field and, specifically, Catholics Jeb Bush and Rick Santorum (in the case of the latter show) for opposing Pope Francis’s upcoming encyclical on global warming.

Today's release from the Federal Reserve on industrial production (including mining and utilities) told us that it declined by a seasonally adjusted 0.2 percent in May. It was the sixth consecutive month showing a decline or no gain, during which time output has fallen by 1.1 percent (not annualized). Bloomberg News, which reported that economists and analysts expected an increase of 0.2 percent…