Personal Finance

Dear NY Times: Who Has Been in Charge All This Time? After 8 Years of 'Financial Downturn,' Far More Americans Delay Major Life Events
By Tom Blumer | June 26, 2015 | 8:40 PM EDT

There may no better illustration of how much harm the economy has inflicted on the American people during the Obama era than a March 2015 Harris survey commissioned by American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. The AICPA's Thursday press release reported that "a majority of American adults (51 percent) have delayed at least one important life decision in the last year due to financial reasons ... an increase of 20 percentage points from a similar survey conducted in 2007."

Covering the survey's results, Ann Carrns at the New York Times, in an item carried at CNBC (also found at the Times's web site), waited seven paragraphs to note a particularly damning statistic about a situation Obamacare advocates like to claim has already been solved.

Salon: 'Rich People are the F****** Worst'
By Connor Williams | June 22, 2015 | 2:33 PM EDT

Writing for Salon, political theorist Sean Illing dismissed wealthy people as entitled and vile, primarily using the California drought as an example. The headline of the article reads, ‘Rich people are the f**cking worst: The 1 percent’s vile new war on us all’. Illing started his piece with the ominous statement that rich people “rarely tell you how you how they really feel about poor people.” 

Bloomberg’s Halperin and Heilemann Hype Latest NYT Piece on Rubio as ‘Dangerous’ & ‘Legit’
By Curtis Houck | June 10, 2015 | 7:07 AM EDT

The hosts of Bloomberg’s With All Due Respect dove into the latest New York Times piece about 2016 Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio on Tuesday and came away with the conclusion that the story concerning Rubio’s personal finances is both “dangerous” and “totally legitimate.” Halperin declared “The New York Times has shoved Marco Rubio down deep into the barrel” and gushed to John Heilemann that “The Times is on it” with Friday’s piece about traffic tickets he’s accumulated with his wife and Tuesday’s article about his finances.

NYT's Peters Plays Money Card Against 'Callous' GOP Hopefuls on Front Page
By Clay Waters | May 5, 2015 | 12:50 PM EDT

Jeremy Peters, the New York Times' designated critic of Republican presidential hopefuls, played the money card on Monday's front page, over a headline that reached back to the 2012 campaign: "G.O.P. Hopefuls Now Try to Woo the 47 Percent." In Peters' previous front-page stories on the GOP field, he has variously accused them of being ignorantly anti-science (in a misleading report on the vaccination controversy) and anti-immigrant.

CBS Uses Skewed Statistics to Back Up Patricia Arquette’s Equal Pay Claim
By Curtis Houck | February 23, 2015 | 9:47 PM EST

All three major broadcast networks took time during their post-Oscars stories on Monday night to mention actress Patricia Arquette’s calls for “wage equality” and “equal rights for women,” but it was the CBS Evening News that went one step further by devoting a whole segment to the topic and used loaded statistics to craft a one-sided argument to prop up Arquette’s rant. Anchor Scott Pelley noted her as one example of how award winners “used the national stage as a soapbox” and gushed that “she has point” when it comes to the issue of what men and women earn.

Networks Ignore Obama’s Decision to Back Down from Plan to Tax 529 College Savings Accounts
By Curtis Houck | January 27, 2015 | 9:19 PM EST

In a reversal of a key proposal from his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama moved on Tuesday to drop the plan to tax 529 college-savings accounts after outcry from members of both parties and a direct appeal on Air Force One from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

When it came to the networks covering this backtracking by the President on this deeply unpopular idea that even ultra liberals like Pelosi and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) opposed, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC made no mention of it during their Tuesday evening newscasts.

AP Report on Venezuela Touts How Chronic Shortages 'Bury Mindless Consumerism'
By Tom Blumer | November 26, 2014 | 9:17 AM EST

It's amazing how any reporter can cover the deepening economic crisis in Venezuela without saying a word about how the country got there.

But Associated Press reporter Hannah Dreier was up to the task. In a bizarre, sickening November 20 report on how its people are having to get "creative" in the face of chronic shortages of basic goods to get by, she acted as if those shortages — and the over five decades of worse problems in Cuba — somehow just happened.

USAT Lists 7 'Things' Middle Class Can't Afford, Including Medical Care
By Tom Blumer | October 29, 2014 | 9:02 PM EDT

On Saturday, Erika Rawes at USA Today's Wall Street Cheat Sheet engaged in some impressive gymnastics as she discussed the middle class and identified seven things its members "can't afford anymore" (the headline) or that "a larger percentage of people have trouble paying for" (the content).

It's a sloppy list. One of the items — debt — isn't a "thing" at all, but rather the result of buying too many "things" without paying for them. Rawes also managed to avoid citing any government policies or practices which might be contributing to the problem. It's not like there's a shortage of items in the past 6-1/2 years (since the recession as normal people define it began), or the past dozen (if you want to go back to where the housing bubble began to inflate in earnest), or even the past 25 (if you want to talk about roughly when the mad rush to have things made in Communist China began). One of the six legitimate "things" on the list is of far more recent origin (HT Political Outcast; bolds are mine):

NYT Headlines Decline in Median Net Worth Since 2003, Downplays Much Steeper Drop Since '07
By Tom Blumer | July 28, 2014 | 12:20 AM EDT

Which is the more important statistic: A 36 percent decline in U.S. median household net worth since 2003, or a 43 percent decline in that same statistic since 2007?

The average person would certainly be more concerned about the latter, which represents an annual drop of about 7 percent compared to the less than 4 percent per year seen in the past decade. But apparently if you're a reporter or editor at the New York Times, the former statistic is of far more interest, while the latter doesn't merit a specific numerical mention.

AP's Crutsinger Thinks Today's Econ News Was Good; Bloomberg's Glinski, Not So Much
By Tom Blumer | July 18, 2014 | 8:00 PM EDT

There were two pieces of significant economy-related news today. The first was that the Conference Board's index of leading economic indicators increased for the fifth straight month, this time by 0.3 percent, while May's increase was revised up to 0.7 percent. The second was that the University of Michigan's preliminary June reading on consumer confidence came in at 81.3, a decline from May. Both results trailed expectations.

Predictably, the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger put a smiley face on the news, believing it shows that "that economic growth should accelerate in the second half of this year," while Bloomberg News's Nina Glinski was more sanguine, interpreting the confidence report as an indication that "Americans’ outlook for the economy dimmed." Excerpts from both efforts follow the jump.

NBC's Roker Jokes Bill Clinton Should Have Punched David Gregory for Asking About Wealth
By Kyle Drennen | June 25, 2014 | 1:05 PM EDT

At the top of the 9 a.m. ET hour on Wednesday's NBC Today, weatherman Al Roker suggested in jest that his colleague David Gregory deserved to be punched in the face by former President Bill Clinton after the Meet the Press moderator asked Clinton in a recent interview about wife Hillary being "out of touch." Roker joked: "You know, I'd give anything if after David finished the question, Bill just kind of hauled off and popped him. Just see what happens." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Moments later, co-host Hoda Kotb rushed to the defense of the Clintons: "There are certain people who when you look at them you think that money is their issue and that's – they're entitled or whatever. You don't really think that when you think of the Clintons. It's not the first thing, I don't think, that pops into people's heads." Roker lamented: "I think we were all probably raised that you don't talk about money and how much people make. And it's unfortunate."

Robert Reich: Spread Ownership Because ‘Whole Country Ought to Be Part of’ Stock Market Gains
By Paul Bremmer | April 15, 2014 | 5:50 PM EDT

Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich made a very curious statement on Monday’s Morning Joe. During a roundtable discussion on income inequality, former congressman Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) asked Reich what policies, besides raising the minimum wage, the government should employ in order to improve economic mobility and increase middle class purchasing power.

Reich, who is significantly to the left on economic issues, signaled his support for expanding the earned income tax credit, but then added that we should also “spread ownership,” asserting, “ [W]e really do have to spread, seriously, ownership because if most of the gains are coming from stock rate gains, the whole country ought to be part of that.”