Stimulus

Crickets: Fed Official Finds No Evidence That $4.5 Trillion in QE Accomplished Anything
By Tom Blumer | August 20, 2015 | 10:26 AM EDT

Imagine if, in 1987, a Federal Reserve official could have pointed to a poorly performing economy and said, "Gee, this supply-side economics hasn't worked out very well." The press would surely have treated the story as a front-page item and ensured that it got air time on the Big Three networks' then-dominant nightly news broadcasts. Of course, there was no such credible report, because the economy under Ronald Reagan was so obviously robust.

Fast-forwarding 28 years, the author of a July Federal Reserve white paper on the Fed's Keynesian-based "quantitative easing" program contends that "There is no work, to my knowledge, that establishes a link from QE to the ultimate goals of the Fed—inflation and real economic activity." In other words, there is no evidence that $4.5 trillion in funny money with which the economy has been saddled has accomplished anything. In the establishment press, only CNBC's Jeff Cox has covered it (bolds are mine):

AP's Boak Finds Millennials Can't Afford to Buy Homes, Cites No Policy-Driven Causes
By Tom Blumer | August 17, 2015 | 6:32 PM EDT

Several commenters at my econ-related posts during the past several months here at NewsBusters and my home blog have noted how Washington's mix of high deficits, over-regulation, and quantitative easing never seem to get any kind of blame for the economy in establishment press coverage.

One could hardly find a better example of that deliberate avoidance than Josh Boak's writeup today at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, on how "Home ownership ... is increasingly on hold for younger Americans." While he identified several symptoms which could easily be traced to Obama administration and Federal Reserve policies, Boak never tagged anyone who might be responsible, instead acting as if all these adverse conditions just sort of happened and ... oh well, here we are.

Japan's Over-'Stimulated' Economy Contracts Again, and the Supposed Solution Is More 'Stimulus'
By Tom Blumer | August 17, 2015 | 1:20 PM EDT

Japan, once a feared world economic powerhouse already at "two decades of little or no real economic growth," just reported that its economy contracted during the second quarter at an annual rate of 1.6 percent.

The common thread throughout the two-decade slump has been the alleged need for ever-increasing levels of Keynesian "stimulus." Apparently refusing to believe there are any other viable alternatives to what hasn't worked for 20 years, the world's press is expecting — and creating pressure for — even more "stimulus."

AP's Crutsinger Predictably Ignores All-Time One-Month Govt. Spending Record
By Tom Blumer | August 12, 2015 | 9:44 PM EDT

Records are made to be broken, but apparently government spending records are not meant to be reported. The Monthly Treasury Statement released today showed that the federal government spent a mind-boggling $374.86 billion in July. That's an all-time single-month record, surpassing the previous high of $369.39 billion "achieved" in August 2012. Yes, there was a calendar "quirk" which caused this month's report to include five Fridays of disbursements; but that happens four times a year, and a record is a record.

'Unexpectedly' Again: Pending Home Sales, Predicted to Rise, Fall 1.8 Percent
By Tom Blumer | July 29, 2015 | 3:46 PM EDT

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 to 0.6 percent. This brought out yet another appearance of the dreaded "U-Word" ("unexpectedly") — accompanied, as usual, by excuses delivered by Victoria Stilwell at Bloomberg News (bolds are mine):

AP's Rugaber Changed Jobs Report Assessment Again on Thursday, From 'Mixed' to 'Bleaker Picture'
By Tom Blumer | July 8, 2015 | 12:07 PM EDT

The Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber had a very bad day on Thursday as he covered the government's June jobs report, but it was all self-inflicted.

I noted much of the problem in a NewsBusters post yesterday, citing how the AP economics writer got badly burned while engaging in the wire service's usual practice of analyzing expected and reported economic results instead of concentrating on relaying the facts. But there's more.

AP Admits: Obamacare Is a Likely Factor in 'Increasing Part-Time Employment'
By Tom Blumer | July 6, 2015 | 12:25 PM EDT

Though the Associated Press is now basically admitting it, we all knew it. Obamacare's 30-hours-per-week definition of a "full-time employee" for employer health insurance coverage purposes has been responsible for one of the fundamentally negative changes in the American workforce — a noticeable move away from full-time to part-time employment.

In a report with a current Saturday morning time stamp at the AP's national web site which originally went up on Friday, the wire service's Christopher Rugaber and Josh Boak covered the "new normal" in the job market. This writeup will receive yours truly's fuller attention later. But for now, I must note that the pair's report largely abandoned the AP's and the establishment press's years of near denial (bolds are mine throughout this post):

NY Times Wonders How Trillions Can Be 'Spent' But 'Crises Like Greece Persist'
By Tom Blumer | June 30, 2015 | 11:47 AM EDT

The current headline at a June 29 New York Times story by Peter Eavis, also appearing on the front page of today's print edition, is "Loads of Debt: A Global Ailment With Few Cures."

But the last portion of the story's web address is "... trillions-spent-but-crises-like-greeces-persist.html." That's because the original headline, the one used at the Times's Twitter account — was "Trillions Spent But Crises Like Greece Persist." Of course without admitting it, Eavis's writeup is an ode to the worldwide failure of Keynesian economics — a term which naturally never appears in any form — and the closed minds of those who don't understand why shoveling vast sums of money created out of thin air into the financial system is only marginally helpful in the short-term, and serious harmful, over the long-term.

AP Writer Dodges Own Question About the State of China's Slowing Economy
By Tom Blumer | June 29, 2015 | 3:12 PM EDT

The world's financial markets had a terrible Monday. The debt crisis in Greece (population: 11 million) has been dominating the headlines and the press's attention, while serious deterioration in China (population: 1.36 billion) is getting short shrift.

It isn't just that the mainland Chinese stock market has broken the bear-market decline threshold of 20 percent in less than three weeks, dropping 21.5 percent from its June 12 peak. Its underlying economy, to the extent that such things can be ascertained in an information-controlled and news-manipulated society, appears to be in serious trouble. Associated Press reporter Ken Sweet, in a Friday Q&A writeup, emulated the worst tendencies of politicians. He posed a question about China's economy, "answered" it with a complete dodge, and pretended that its economy hasn't started slowing yet (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Press Fails to Note That Weak First-Quarter Economies Have Been a Democrat Phenomenon
By Tom Blumer | June 8, 2015 | 11:13 AM EDT

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 adjusted." (Supposedly, the way to fix this is add more "seasoning.") On April 22, CNBC's Steve Liesman contended that it's been a chronic 30-year problem. As far as I can tell, no one in the press has followed up on that claim. If they had, they would have found that it has not been a 30-year "problem," and that it's a "problem" remarkably unique to the presence of Democratic Party presidential administrations and policies:

AP's Crutsinger Celebrates April Budget Surplus, But Ignores Its Cause: Economy-Sapping Tax Increases
By Tom Blumer | May 16, 2015 | 9:52 AM EDT

On Tuesday, Associated Press reporter Martin Crutsinger celebrated the federal government's large April budget surplus, caused by "a flood of tax payments (which) pushed government receipts to an all-time high." He didn't mention that the tax payments were higher largely because of tax increases passed in 2013. It certainly didn't occur because of an improving economy — because it's not meaningfully improving.

Crutsinger also noted that the April 2015 result of $156.7 billion "was the largest surplus since April 2008," without telling us that the previous surplus was achieved despite (better argument: "because of") the Bush 43 tax cuts.

At AP, It's 'Heads We Report, Tails We Ignore' For Economic Data, as Mich. Confidence Survey Dives
By Tom Blumer | May 15, 2015 | 10:43 PM EDT

On May 1, the Associated Press's Paul Wiseman was pleased to tell the wire service's readers and subscribing outlets that "The University of Michigan's sentiment index rose to 95.9 from 93 in March," reaching "its second-highest level since 2007." Among other things, the survey's chief economist said that the result reflected "improving prospects for jobs and incomes."

What a difference two weeks makes. Today's preliminary U of M survey for April dropped to 88.6, completely missing expectations of 95.9. Zero Hedge notes that it's the biggest expectations miss on record, and the largest single-month drop since December 2012. Naturally, a search at its national site indicates that the AP prepared no story on the U of M report.