Reuters

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).…

The company officially known as the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. has filed for bankruptcy for the second time in five years. This time around, the storied "A&P" name may completely disappear. Coverage at USA Today by Nathan Bomey notes that "About 93% (of its workers) are represented by one of 12 different unions, and many of them have bumping rights that the company has described as…

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…

The folks at Reuters issued a pretty sloppy video yesterday relating to the government's June jobs report. That videos described yesterday's reported jobs gains of 223,000 as "broad-based." That's true only if you think having 222,000 of yeaterday's those seasonally adjusted gains occurring in service industries, while only 1,000 were seen in goods-producing industries, is "broad-based":

The politically correct speech police are everywhere these days. Many members of the leftist establishment have taken it upon themselves to aid in their enforcement efforts. No one is safe — not even the person they want us to believe is destined to be the Democrats' 2016 presidential nominee. Yesterday, at a Florissant, Missouri church only five miles from Ferguson, Hillary Clinton uttered the…

Although labeled as “The Great Debate,” a Reuters story about the necessity of drastic change to avert “the climate apocalypse that has already begun” was anything but a debate. Slate Magazine’s Bitwise tech columnist David Auerbach wrote that June 18 Reuters column with the dramatic headline: “A child born today may live to see humanity’s end, unless…” He promoted Australian microbiologist…

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…

On Thursday, the Census Bureau's report on May retail sales said that seasonally adjusted sales came in 1.2 percent higher than April. The press almost universally cited that result as demonstrating that the economy's rough patch earlier this year is likely over. Yours truly and the contrarians at Zero Hedge both noted that the result is highly suspect, and doesn't adequately reflect the raw…

Will Deener, who has been a business reporter since at least before the turn of the century, considers his most unforgettable experience on the job to be "Covering the crash of the Internet stocks and Enron in 2000-2002." Sunday evening, the Dallas Morning News columnist moaned about how big U.S. companies engaged in real businesses are avoiding paying billions in taxes because "the nation’s…

The business press has gotten really excited about the possibility — some of them are even treating it as a probability — that the first-quarter's recently reported annualized economic contraction of 0.7 percent will go positive if it gets revised for so-called "residual seasonality." "Residual seasonality" is "the manifestation of seasonal patterns in data that have already been seasonally…

This morning's April factory orders report from the Census Bureau showed yet another seasonally adjusted decline. This time, they fell 0.4 percent, seriously underperforming expectations that they would come in flat. This naturally brought forth another sighting of the U-word ("unexpectedly"), this time at Reuters. Both Reuters and the Associated Press failed to note how steep the year-over-year…

This has to go down as one of the most idiotic comparisons of all time.  On Sunday, Reuters posted a story trying to link the Texas biker gang shootings to the peaceful patriotic bikers making their way to the Rolling Thunder event held in Washington D.C., as they have done each Memorial Day weekend since 1988. The story headline reads, “Thousands of bikers gather in Washington to honor vets.” …

Maurice Tamman at Reuters put spin on the latest Reuters poll in a blog headlined “Fake newscaster, real credibility: Jon Stewart stands at the peak of American punditry poll.” Tamman reported: "As Jon Stewart winds down his 19-year stint as host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, he and Stephen Colbert sit at the peak of American punditry despite their left-leaning view of life, the universe…