Wages & Prices

AP's Crutsinger Fails to Investigate How Jobless Claims Stay Low With Slow Hiring
By Tom Blumer | October 22, 2015 | 4:13 PM EDT

If a Republican or conservative was in the White House, the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger would have found a reason to be unimpressed in his dispatch today about how low initial unemployment claims continue to be, even as hiring has been slowing down. (Ideally, reporters should just relay the facts and leave the theorizing out of their stories, but that ship has sadly long since sailed.)

Crutsinger exhibited no real curiosity because a Democrat is in the White House. Therefore, it's left to New Media to at least get the alternative ideas out there; a contributor at the contrarian blog Zero Hedge did that several days ago. After the jump, readers will find most of Crutsinger's report covering the Department of Labor's initial claims release today, and a healthly chunk of the just-mentioned Zero Hedge analysis.

CNN's Hill Wonders Why People Have Negative Reaction to Word 'Socialism'
By Brad Wilmouth | October 14, 2015 | 1:11 PM EDT

On Wednesday's CNN Newsroom with Carol Costello, during a discussion of the Democratic presidential debate, liberal CNN political analyst Marc Lamont Hill defended Bernie Sanders' socialist views and griped about Hillary Clinton apparently taking a jab at the Vermont Senator as the CNN analyst complained that "she's playing to people's insecurities and fears," and "play[ing] to the cheap seats."

Post Owner Makes $16.5B While Paper Whines 558 Times About ‘Income Inequality’
By Dan Gainor | September 30, 2015 | 12:13 AM EDT

How do you spell hypocrisy? W-a-s-h-i-n-g-t-o-n P-o-s-t.

The Washington, D.C., paper of record has spent the past year filling bird cages and landfills with stories about income inequality – 156 in print alone and another 404 in blogs or 560 total. Subtract one of those (listed twice in LexisNexis) that included the name of billionaire Post owner Jeffrey Bezos. And that was a column by conservative George Will declaring: “Income inequality is good.”

Not News at AP: Pending Home Sales Index Hits Lowest Level in 5 Months
By Tom Blumer | September 29, 2015 | 10:15 AM EDT

August's seasonally adjusted Pending Home Sales Index value contained in the related press release from the National Association of Realtors was the lowest in the past five months, and 2 percent below April's level.

Disclosing the size of the recent slump apparently wasn't considered important at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press. What was news at AP, whose Josh Boak essentially copied NAR's release and added standard boilerplate about job growth instead of engaging in informative journalism, is that the index is up by over 6 percent from a year ago, even though that increase ended several months ago.

Nets Use Drug Price Hike to Hail Hillary’s Campaign Agenda
By Kyle Drennen | September 22, 2015 | 1:12 PM EDT

All three broadcast networks Tuesday morning seized on a pharmaceutical company hiking the price of a prescription drug in order to promote Hillary Clinton’s call for new government regulation of the industry. At the top of NBC’s Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie proclaimed: “5,000% hike?! The young drug company CEO under fire for raising the cost of a life-saving pill overnight....The controversial decision making it all the way to the campaign trail.”

AP's Boak: With the Economy So Good, Why Won't Fed Raise Rates?
By Tom Blumer | September 19, 2015 | 10:51 PM EDT

The business press just can't understand why the Federal Reserve decided not to raise interest rates on Thursday. After all, these alleged journalists have been telling us for months bordering on years that U.S. economy is really in good shape. So it should be able to handle a rate hike, especially after over seven years of rates at essentially zero. The problem is that they now believe their own bogus blather. The U.S. economy is not in good shape, and data seen during the past several weeks show that the situation is deteriorating, not improving.

Excerpts from an early Friday report at the Associated Press by Josh Boak illustrate how out of touch the business press really is (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

Business Wires Pretend That U.S. Weakness Didn't Influence Fed's No-Change Rate Decision
By Tom Blumer | September 19, 2015 | 10:02 AM EDT

The business press is trying to convince readers, listeners, and viewers that Janet Yellen's Federal Reserve kept interest rates at zero not because of U.S. economic conditions, which supposedly "look good" with "steady economic growth." No-no. She stayed the course because of the troubled tglobal economy.

Thursday evening, Reuters wrote that the Fed failed to move "in a bow to worries about the global economy, financial market volatility and sluggish inflation at home." Bloomberg directly blamed "China growth concerns." The Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger cited "a weak global economy, persistently low inflation and unstable financial markets." None of the three noted the deteriorating situation in the U.S., and the only item I could find which cited the Fed's full set of pathetic annual U.S. growth projections was a Wall Street Journal editorial.

Shock: CBS’s O’Donnell Smacks Bernie Sanders from the Right on Health Care, Taxes
By Curtis Houck | September 18, 2015 | 11:55 AM EDT

In a near 180-degree reversal to his interview the previous evening with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Democratic presidential candidate and socialist Bernie Sanders found himself on Friday’s CBS This Morning being repeatedly slammed from the right by co-host Norah O’Donnell on his far-left tax plans and hope for a universal health care system. 

AP's Riccardi Distorts, Misrepresents Estimated Impacts of Jeb Bush's Tax Plan
By Tom Blumer | September 17, 2015 | 2:21 PM EDT

Either Nicholas Riccardi at the Associated Press is woefully ignorant, or he set out to deliberately mislead readers about the impact of Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush's tax plan. I'll report the details; readers here can decide for themselves.

Riccardi's "analysis," contained in his Sunday morning writeup covering the tax proposals of Bush, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, contained the following paragraph summarizing the Bush plan's impact (HT to longtime emailer Alfred Lemire):

AP, Covering Latest Government Report, Hides the Obama Era's Poverty Rise, Household Income Decline
By Tom Blumer | September 16, 2015 | 5:21 PM EDT

From its "Don't read this story, it's boring" headline to its obfuscating content, today's coverage at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, of the Census Bureau's 2014 report on income and poverty in the United States was all about ensuring that readers know as little as possible about the declining incomes and disheartening increases in officially-defined poverty seen during the Obama administration.

I'll focus on just two of the many shortcomings in Jesse J. Holland's AP report.

New York Times Food Writer Mark Bittman Regurgitates Left-Wing Inanities While Sending Himself Off
By Clay Waters | September 14, 2015 | 11:17 PM EDT

New York Times' food writer and leftist ranter Mark Bittman is retiring, and sent himself off in the paper's Sunday Review with a seven-course feast of his usual Krugman-esque pomposity and shameless left-wing inanities under the guise of food writing. NewsBusters has long documented Bittman's limitless appetite for intrusive government in the name of safety. Bittman's self-send-off in the Sunday Review regurgitated many of his hard-to-swallow premises, like limiting the speech of food marketers and pushing for a $15 minimum wage.

AP's Coverage of Govt's Wholesale Report Treats Bloated Inventories As a Positive
By Tom Blumer | September 10, 2015 | 11:14 PM EDT

Today's Monthly Wholesale Trade report from the Census Bureau covering July was the latest in a wave of disappointing reports on business activity this year. Wholesale inventories remained very high, while sales turned in a seventh consecutive month of year-over-year declines.

Much of that sales decline is due to the fall in oil prices during the past year. But even after factoring that out, wholesale sales are either flat or declining, leading one to wonder how the economy could have grown at all during the past year or so. Josh Boak at the Associated Press appeared to understand that there are some problems out there, but his Thursday morning report understated their seriousness, largely because he doesn't seem to understand that a high level of inventories can be a very dangerous thing: