Jeannine Aversa

AP Fails to Note Record-Breaking Nature of Feb. Single-Month Deficit ($232 Billion), But Did in 2008
By Tom Blumer | March 12, 2012 | 11:22 PM EDT

In his report on today's release of Uncle Sam's February Monthly Treasury Statement, Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press today did almost all he could to ensure that his wire service remains deserving of the nickname yours truly gave it several month ago: "The Administration's Press."

Rugaber's primary sin of omission ensures that readers, listeners and viewers at AP's subscribing outlets will probably not learn that February's deficit, at a rounded $232 billion, was the highest single-month shortfall in U.S. history. But four years ago in March 2008, during the final year of George W. Bush's presidency, the wire service's Jeannine Aversa somehow found space to note the record-breaking nature of that year's $176 billion February deficit:

AP's Surveyed Economists: Unless Stopped by $150 Oil, Happy Days Are Here Again
By Tom Blumer | April 27, 2011 | 12:27 AM EDT

It's always a bit of risk saying that a bunch of supposedly smart folks are wrong, but the economists Jeannine Aversa at the Associated Press consulted for a Tuesday afternoon report on the economic outlook must be taking a double dose of sunshine pills every day.

If we are to believe these folks, the only thing that can stop the economy now is oil -- not the $112 a barrel accompanied by $4 per gallon gas we're seeing now. That's noooo problem. These smarties apparently think it's clear sailing ahead for the economy as long as oil doesn't go to $150, which would translate to at least $5.50 a gallon.

Here goes, if you can stand it:

AP survey: Only oil shock can stop economy now

Where Did the Fed Foreign Lending Story Go?
By Tom Blumer | April 7, 2011 | 1:02 AM EDT

Last Friday, in what one would think would be a bombshell story headlined "Foreign Banks Tapped Fed’s Secret Lifeline Most at Crisis Peak," Bloomberg's Bradley Keoun and Craig Torres reported that foreign banks secretly and routinely tapping the Federal Reserve's "discount window" lending program, primarily in 2008 and 2009. Some specifics:

  • "(The) loans protected a lender to local governments in Belgium, a Japanese fishing-cooperative financier and a company part-owned by the Central Bank of Libya."
  • Dexia SA (DEXB), based in Brussels and Paris, borrowed as much as $33.5 billion through its New York branch ..."
  • "Dublin-based Depfa Bank Plc, taken over in 2007 by a German real-estate lender later seized by the German government, drew $24.5 billion."
  • "...foreign banks ... (accounted) for at least 70 percent of the $110.7 billion borrowed during the week in October 2008 when use of the program surged to a record."

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke fought for two years to keep the information secret after Bloomberg filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2009. The Bloomberg report quotes Bernanke as claiming in April 2009 that disclosure "might lead market participants to infer weakness."

In the Bloomberg report, Congressman Ron Paul is quoted making a prediction that has sadly been way off the mark:

Goldman, AP to Lawmakers: Keep Spending Like Mad or Economic Growth Will Suffer
By Tom Blumer | February 26, 2011 | 9:18 PM EST

Thursday, an odd warning emanated from the halls of the supposedly esteemed investment firm known as Goldman Sachs: If Uncle Sam spends $61 billion less during the second half of the current fiscal year, and ends the year with "only" $3.758 trillion in spending instead of the administration's anticipated $3.819 trillion, economic growth will be seriously harmed.

Yesterday, similar nonsense was put forth by Jeannine Aversa at the Associated Press in reaction to the government's report that economic growth during the fourth quarter was revised down to 2.8% from 3.2%, when experts (like the geniuses at Goldman) had expected the number to come in at 3.3%. The headlined whine: "State and local budget cuts are slowing US economy."

First, here is the Financial Times report carried at CNBC reporting on Goldman's federal spending gibberish:

How 'Clever': AP Item Calls Fed's Bond-Buying Program 'Stimulus,' Avoids Correct Term ('Quantitative Easing')
By Tom Blumer | February 8, 2011 | 1:16 PM EST

The search for ways to rehabilitate the Obama administration in the eyes of the public is seemingly a never-ending enterprise at the Associated Press.

Oh, they slip up occasionally. Late last week (covered yesterday at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), in an item primarily about how Congress really, really can't stop planned stimulus spending (uh-huh), the wire service's Brett J. Blackledge let slip that President Obama's stimulus program is "politically unpopular." In noting that the government wasn't able to spend the funds as fast as intended, Blackledge also indirectly confirmed an obvious truth the President admitted to the New York Times that he needed almost two years to learn: "there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects."

So what do you do if you're "The Essential Global News Network" and need to recover? Why, you find something that appears to be working (sort of), and rename it "stimulus." Voila! See how easy that is?

The AP's Jeannine Aversa, with the help of her item's headline, performed the sleight-of-hand today:

AP Pair's Employment Report Howler: 'More than half a million people found work in January'
By Tom Blumer | February 6, 2011 | 9:22 AM EST

Someone needs to tell the Associated Press's Jeannine Aversa and Christopher Rugaber that just because the number of unemployed people declines, it doesn't mean that they "found work."

That must be what the pair believes. Their error-riddled and suspect supposition-driven Friday afternoon report, whose title predictably focused on the unemployment-rate drop while ignoring the pathetic increase in seasonally adjusted jobs, actually made that claim (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

AP Report Avoids Noting Worst-Ever Month for Housing Units Completed, Worst Nov. Ever in Starts and Permits
By Tom Blumer | December 17, 2010 | 11:14 PM EST

Leave it to the Associated Press, with the assistance of the "magic" of seasonal adjustments, to make the November housing market appear as if it was a bit better than the two months that preceded it. It wasn't.

Thursday, the wire service grabbed the single crumb that was available, namely the Census Bureau's report earlier that day that annualized, seasonally adjusted housing starts had increased by about 4% and turned it into a decidedly positive headline: "Home construction up after 2 months of declines."

AP Economics Writer Jeannine Aversa watered down the headline in her very first sentence, describing the "up" part of the headline as a "nudge."

That's nowhere near enough. The available evidence indicates that November may have been the worst month the homebuilding industry has had in 4-5 decades of related recordkeeping.

Within 3 Days, AP's Reported Unemployment Estimates Significantly Worsen
By Tom Blumer | November 27, 2010 | 8:39 PM EST

In separate reports for the Associated Press during the past week, Christopher Rugaber and Jeannine Aversa, economics writers for the wire service, each dealt with estimates for next year's average unemployment rate. They came back with significantly different predictions for 2011 without recognizing how widely those estimates varied.

On Tuesday, Rugaber dealt with the Federal Reserve's latest economic growth projections, in the process telling readers that the Fed expects that the unemployment rate "will be 8.9 percent to 9.1 percent in 2011."

On Friday, Aversa looked at three alternative proposals for handling next year's federal income tax rates, which will increase substantially for everyone unless Congress acts. The projected unemployment rates for next year under the three proposals are all either 9.9% or 10.0%.

So the Fed thinks that unemployment will come down next year, while Aversa's consulted experts think it will go up slightly regardless of what Congress does or doesn't do about taxes. The one-point difference between the two sets of estimates represents about 1.5 million workers. That's not a small number. Did things suddenly get worse while the turkeys were cooking on Thursday?

Asterisk Alert: AP Story on Jobless Claims Doesn't Note Labor Dept. Report Missing Data of Nine States
By Tim Graham | September 9, 2010 | 8:25 PM EDT

What if reporters hunting and pecking for happy economic news are playing up incomplete government reports? Take this AP story by Jeannine Aversa on hopes rising over jobless claims:

The number of people signing up for unemployment benefits dropped to the lowest level in two months, an encouraging sign that companies aren't resorting to deeper layoffs even as the economy has lost momentum.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that new claims for unemployment aid plunged last week by a seasonally adjusted 27,000 to 451,000. Economists had predicted a much smaller decline of just 2,000.

But wait, we have an asterisk alert: did the Labor Department really get data from all 50 states? Bloomberg News explained, ahem, that nine states did not report actual numbers:

The Fed's Beige Book: AP Needs a Geography Lesson
By Tom Blumer | September 9, 2010 | 12:08 AM EDT
FedTheBeigeBookGraphic0910For the record, here are the first and fourth sentences from the Federal Reserve's Beige Book released earlier this afternoon:

Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts suggested continued growth in national economic activity during the reporting period of mid-July through the end of August, but with widespread signs of a deceleration compared with preceding periods.

... However, the remaining Districts of New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, Atlanta, and Chicago all highlighted mixed conditions or deceleration in overall economic activity.

It may be fair to describe the detail in Atlanta's section of the report as "mixed" (it's a borderline call; the opening paragraph from that District's report will appear later). But Richmond's section is clearly one of deceleration, which brings us to today's clearly needed geography lesson for Jeannine Aversa and/or a headline writer at the Associated Press.

What follows is a graphic containing the headline at Aversa's 2:45 p.m. story (since updated here), and her first few paragraphs:

AP to Bernanke: Save Us, Ben! (Barack, Nancy, and Harry Who?)
By Tom Blumer | August 27, 2010 | 12:46 AM EDT
torn-dollarSometimes you just have to chuckle at the transparent motivations of business writers in the establishment press.

Two Associated Press reports from this afternoon, one from Stephen Bernard and another much lengthier piece from Jeannine Aversa, attempt to set the template for Friday morning's reportage: Despite all the bad news, including a serious downward revision to second-quarter economic growth, it's up to Big Ben Bernanke to calm everyone down, and magically return the economy to some kind of even keel.

No pressure there, big guy.

Aversa's earlier report lays it on especially thick:

Bernanke's top tool now may be power of persuasion

AP Quietly Lowers the 'Normal' Unemployment Bar to 6%
By Tom Blumer | July 3, 2010 | 10:15 AM EDT
DefiningTheNewNormal0610Those looking for evidence that there is a move afoot in the establishment press to lower the bar for whatever economic accomplishments might be accomplished during the Obama administration will be interested in how the Associated Press's report on the government's June jobs report defined "normal" unemployment.

Perhaps it's valid for reporters Jeannine Aversa and Christopher Rugaber to refer to 6% unemployment as "normal," if by that they mean "typical non-recessionary" or "long-term average" unemployment. But I couldn't help but remember that during the Bush 43 and Reagan years, unemployment rates just above and occasionally even below that level were described by wire service reporters and other journalists as "persistent unemployment" -- i.e., decidedly not "normal." I quickly found several AP and other reports from those eras that confirmed my recall of what is now a demonstrated double standard.

Here is the opening sentence from the AP report, followed by the term-redefining paragraph (bold is mine):