CNN Money's Censky Understands But Understates White House Economic Fo

July 27th, 2012 11:15 PM
Give credit to CNN Money's Annalyn Chensky for intuitively recognizing the ridiculousness of the economic projections included in the White House's Mid-Session Review released today. That especially goes for the assumption that full-year economic growth in 2012, with the first and second quarters coming in at an annualized 2.0% and 1.5%, respectively (the latter subject to revisions which…

More Grading on the Curve: At RTT, Acceptable Weekly Unemployment Clai

March 8th, 2012 10:29 AM
The Department of Labor reported today that initial claims for unemployment benefits increased to 362,000 from an upwardly revised (as usual) 354,000 the previous week. Expectations were for a reading of 351,000 (Business Insider's email) or 352,000 (Bloomberg). Over at the Associated Press, also known as the Administration's Press, the headlined reaction in its 9:17 a.m. report was: "…

Press Celebrates Unemployment Claims Drop Below 400K, Ignores Track Re

July 28th, 2011 4:16 PM
Two "alert" emails hit my inbox this morning concerning the Department of Labor's just-released unemployment claims report. The one I expected came from CNNMoney.com, which read: "Initial unemployment claims fall below 400,000 for the first time in more than 3 months, dropping 24,000 to 398,000 in latest week." The other one came from USAToday.com, which does not ordinarily issue alerts when…

Pathetic: CNN Claims Tuesday Stock Market Rise Entirely Due to Obama

July 20th, 2011 1:39 AM
In a USA Today email I received 20 minutes after Tuesday's closing bell, I was informed that the exceptionally good day occurred because the stock markets were "buoyed by strong earnings reports by IBM, Coke and others." A visit to the email's linked article also partially attributed the rise to "renewed hopes that U.S. lawmakers would be able to break their stalemate and strike a deficit-…