Economy

Kevin Drum thinks he understands Hillary Clinton’s reluctance to release the transcripts of her Goldman Sachs speeches, and it has more to do with attacks she might face during the fall campaign than it does with Bernie Sanders. Drum believes it’s “vanishingly unlikely” that the speeches include “something genuinely damning,” but noted in a Saturday post that “when you give speeches to any…

The government reported this morning that seasonally adjusted March housing starts and building permits fell by 8.8 percent and 7.7 percent, respectively, far worse declines than analysts and economists predicted. After the report, the business wires at least communicated the facts accurately, but continued to insist almost to the point of editorializing that there's no reason to be worried…

Longtime readers know that if the current stagnating economy were occurring during a Republican or conservative presidential administration, the press would be searching high and low to find a "respected" economist or analyst forecasting the beginning of an economic contraction while screaming that a recession is just around the corner. Instead, the business press has stuck to saying that "most…

Key data about the U.S. economy's performance released this past week was mostly dismal. Wednesday brought news that seasonally adjusted March retail sales, instead of climbing as predicted, fell by 0.3 percent. Later that morning, the government reported that manufacturing and trade inventories and sales both fell in February. The worst news came on Friday, when the Federal Reserve reported…

Hillary and Bernie love to go after “the banks.”  But the real scoundrel of the two on this subject?  Without doubt it’s Hillary and her banking scam.

For better or worse, the press, Wall Street and others routinely place a great deal of faith in the federal government's payroll employment estimates. But when Republican Governor Rick Scott's supporters cited data from Uncle Sam's Bureau of Labor Statistics to defend him against an insufferably rude leftist who started screaming and cursing at him in a Starbucks coffee shop, Associated Press…

Just three months after Arch, the nation's Number 2 coal mining company, filed for bankruptcy, Number 1, Peabody Energy, has followed suit. Five of the industry's largest firms have now gone bankrupt in the past 12 months. Two Associated Press stories on Peabody this week managed to avoid mentioning the name of President Barack Obama, whose hostility toward the industry has been obvious since…

Today's report from the government on retail sales was awful — "unexpectedly" so, according to both Bloomberg and Reuters. Following on the heels of a 0.4 percent seasonally adjusted decline in January and a flat February, March sales fell by 0.3 percent. Two of the three main U.S. business wire services blamed the American people, not the worst post-recession economy since World War II during…

There’s a crucial difference between the Loch Ness Monster and any Republican health-care-reform plan worthy of the name: Nessie almost certainly does not exist, but the GOP plan cannot exist. That, essentially, was the message of a Monday blog post by New York magazine’s Chait. “It is impossible to design a health-care plan that is both consistent with conservative ideology and acceptable to…

Despite the decay of the left-dominated blue-city model during the past several decades, liberals and the press are not fans of many urban neighborhood improvement efforts. One recent example found at a national media outlet is at Newsweek, where on April 2, Alexander Nazaryan, in an item headlined "WHITE CITY: THE NEW URBAN BLIGHT IS RICH PEOPLE," wrote that "gentrification ... turns cities…

On Tuesday, shortly after Governor Jerry Brown signed California's $15-an-hour minimum wage legislation, the Associated Press's Michael R. Blood and Don Thompson called the move "a victory for those struggling on the margins of the economy and the politically powerful unions that pushed it." As seen in a NewsBusters post on March 31, it's definitely a win for union members whose wages are set…

On Sunday's Fareed Zakaria GPS, host Zakaria began his show by touting what he viewed as President Barack Obama's accomplishments as evidence he has been a "transformational" President, while also giving some "passive" credit to Obama for a Republican party "implosion."

During Barack Obama’s presidency, Republicans have greatly increased their power at the state level, enabling governments in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Kansas, and other locales to enact legislation that Daily Kos blogger Hunter has called, among other things, “straight-up crooked” and that has caused, among other things, a “financial clusterfuck.” In a Friday post, Hunter theorized that one…

What does it say about Bernie Sanders--and the Pope--that when it comes to economics, Sanders sees Pope Francis as more "radical" than he is? Appearing on today's Morning Joe, Sanders discussed the news that he has been invited to visit the Vatican. Sanders mentioned that [other than on social issues] he is a "big, big fan of the Pope." Said Sanders: "people think Bernie Sanders is radical. Uh-…