Economy

If you were depending on Telemundo or Univision for your news as Puerto Rico careened toward its largest default yet on May Day 2016, you would have to be forgiven for having absolutely no idea about the real causes behind the territory’s massive default, including a public sector apparatus that has remained pathetically addicted to unsustainable levels of spending at all levels.

In March of 2013, the Republican National Committee issued what soon became known as the “autopsy report,” which discussed how the party might improve its chances of winning presidential elections. Last Thursday in The Atlantic, reform conservative (or former conservative) Frum provided the GOP with a sort of pre-autopsy document that it might consult after Donald Trump’s “almost certain failure…

Americans think the economy and ObamaCare are terrible because of Republicans’ “negative advertising” according to MSNBC and The New York Times. Monday night’s Hardball with Chris Matthews held a discussion between the host and Times’ reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin, where they echoed President Obama’s sentiment that Americans only thought badly about the economy and ObamaCare because of the GOP’s…

The U.S. economy slowed down so much last quarter that even Europe’s economy grew faster. But if you just watched the broadcast networks’ and Hispanic media’s evening news programs, you wouldn’t have known that. The U.S.’s real gross domestic product (GDP) only rose at a 0.5 percent annualized rate in the first quarter of 2016, marking the lowest rate since the first quarter of 2014. Even in the…

On Monday, all three network morning shows covered the violent May Day rioting that broke out across Seattle on Sunday. However, the NBC, ABC, and CBS broadcasts made sure to tout how “the march began as a peaceful demonstration for the rights of workers and immigrants.” No liberal labels were used to characterize the protesters and the reporters avoided explaining the Communist roots of the day.

That the establishment press despises New Media isn't exactly breaking news, but a lesser-known subset of that tension has just become more visible. As usual, an Old Media outlet is the smear merchant, and the New Media site has the upper hand on the truth. Mainstream business journalists really despise the financial and economics blogs which puncture the insufferable "the economy is just fine"…

On Thursday, shortly after the government estimated that the economy only grew at an annual rate of 0.5 percent in this year's first quarter, Jeffry Bartash at Marketwatch.com commented on the especially weak performance in nonresidential business investment. That category subtracted 0.76 points from GDP, the worst result since the second quarter of 2009, during the recession. Bartash,…

Venezuela's hyperinflationary economic crisis has gotten worse in one very important and apparently unprecedented sense than even the one seen in Weimar Germany in the 1920s. Yet the Associated Press and the New York Times apparently have no interest in telling their readers, listeners or viewers about it. In the post-World War I German Weimar Republic, the situation became so out of control…

The editorialists at Investor's Business Daily have reported on the results of an important study by several George Mason University Mercatus Center economists showing what regulations have cost the economy in economic growth since 1980. The establishment press, which has been singularly uninterested in reporting anything that has to potential to slow the regulatory leviathan down — y'know,…

New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait admires Bernie Sanders’s willingness (eagerness?) to raise taxes so as to “finance the kind of social benefits American liberals would prefer.” That’s why Chait is disappointed that Sanders opposes Philadelphia’s proposed three-cents-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened drinks, revenue from which would fund citywide pre-kindergarten and other programs. In a Tuesday…

CNN's Alisyn Camerota tossed mostly hardballs during her interview of Carly Fiorina on Thursday's New Day, especially on the issue of outsourcing. Camerota first cited how the former HP executive was "very honest about the jobs...[she] outsourced" back in 2004, and wondered, "Do you fear that your take back then — and the outsourcing — will come back to haunt you in Indiana?" The anchor followed…

Just in time for tomorrow's first-quarter economic growth announcement from the government, Bloomberg Businessweek's Economics Editor is telling readers: "Don't Sweat America's Upcoming Microscopic GDP Growth." Besides, Peter Coy writes, people need to get used to the supposedly inescapable fact that "Normal growth for the U.S. economy is just a lot lower than it used to be." Americans shouldn't…

Search for "go further" and "Hillary Clinton" for recent news on the Democratic Party's frontrunner, and you won't find any establishment press coverage. This is disappointing but not unexpected. The establishment press continues to run interference for her, and reporting that Mrs. Clinton will "go further" (to the left, of course) on a number of issues than Barack Obama has while he has been…

Republican politicians, more than their Democratic counterparts, tend to campaign on anti-Washington themes. That’s kind of odd, suggests Michael Tomasky, given that one of Washington’s quintessential institutions, Congress, helps the GOP by playing a crucial role in obscuring the American people’s fondness for liberal socioeconomic policies. “If Congress is what you see when you see America,”…