Economy

The Brookings Institution, the leftist think tank, is wailing and gnashing its teeth over its finding that in many metro areas, "income inequality," their favorite bogeyman, is being "driven by declining incomes" among their poorest residents. The problem isn't so much that the rich are getting richer as it is that the poor are getting poorer. As a result, "Inequality is higher today in most…

On Saturday, after one of the worst year-opening weeks for the stock market in many years, Myles Udland at BusinessInsider.com complained that "The stock market is having a nightmare start to 2016 and it's all the Fed's fault." This sentiment is apparently widely held in the media. At NationalInterest.org on Tuesday, Christopher Whalen wrote that "the Fed created the current unstable market…

Economist Steve Moore told Fox Business Network correspondent Charlie Gasparino on Jan. 14, that Republicans would win the presidency if the current economic malaise persists in nine months. “If we’re in this kind of economic rut nine months from now, the Republicans are going to win the election,” said Moore, a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

It would appear that Yuri Kageyama at the Associated Press has fallen into the trap of believing the rubbish her employer and much of the rest of the world's press has been pushing about how the world's economies really aren't performing all that poorly, that this "new normal" world isn't all that bad, and what we are seeing is all we have a right to expect. You see, Kageyama doesn't understand…

On Wednesday, ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News neglected to cover two separate stories on the business and news media fronts as Al Jazeera America announced that it will cease operations while General Electric made clear that it will move its headquarters to Boston after 41 years in Connecticut because of high taxes. In contrast, the CBS Evening News offered dual news briefs on both…

In October 2013, late-night PBS talk-show host and author Tavis Smiley told Sean Hannity at Fox News that "The data is going to indicate sadly that when the Obama administration is over, black people will have lost ground in every single leading economic indicator category." On Monday, on the eve of what has been said to be President Barack Obama's final State of the Union address, Smiley was…

Carol Costello surprisingly lumped in Senator Bernie Sanders with Donald Trump on Tuesday's CNN Newsroom: "Donald Trump is suggesting mass deportations and big tariffs to fix the economy. Bernie Sanders is offering things like free college tuition and huge tax increases. These things are extreme. Yet...they're being accepted by many voters." Costello later played up that "there's no nuance in…

Is Hillary Clinton panicking? We've seen the polls showing the Iowa race closing to within the margin of error, and Hillary losing in New Hampshire. But could Clinton's internal polling be even more calamitous? The question arises because Hillary is suddenly trying to rival Bernie Sanders in bashing the rich. Nine months after announcing her candidacy, Clinton suddenly called into Chris Hayes'…

At the Associated Press, as seen at its "Top Business News" page Friday afternoon, Christopher Rugaber opened his song of praise for yesterday's jobs report ("US EMPLOYERS HIRE AT ROBUST PACE, DEFYING GLOBAL TRENDS") as follows: "American employers added a robust 292,000 jobs in December, suggesting that the U.S. economy is so far defying global weakness and growing solidly. ..." Rugaber's…

Yesterday at NewsBusters, Ken Shepherd noted how quickly and gleefully the New York Times jumped ("an impressive sprint capping off a year of solid job growth") on December's relatively strong jobs report. The Associated Press joined the parade — "US EMPLOYERS HIRE AT BLISTERING PACE, DEFYING GLOBAL TRENDS" – and kept its story as its lead in its Business "Top Stories" until late afternoon.…

In a Wednesday post, New York magazine's Chait sought to debunk the belief that Marco Rubio is a moderate. As for why some might see him that way, Chait suggested a few reasons, among them that Rubio, unlike fellow Republican presidential contenders Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, “avoids statements that make him appear ostentatiously deranged.” Chait argued that while Rubio’s focus on positioning…

With the Bureau of Labor Statistics releasing December 2015 jobs numbers today, numerous news agencies flashed out the fresh stats to their breaking-news alert subscribers. Looking at them on my iPhone this morning, I noticed that the New York Times was unique in puffing the development with editorial language rather than sticking strictly to the facts.

When it comes to raising the minimum wage, networks minimize balance and maximize bias. After a year of protests clamoring for a $15 minimum wage, Christian Science Monitor reported that 14 states and several cities increased minimum wages or planned to in 2016. Several more cities and states are expected to consider a $15 minimum wage with ballot or legislative initiatives, according to USA…

Along with skipping on Wednesday night the successful congressional vote to repeal ObamaCare and defund Planned Parenthood, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC also declined to dedicate a second of airtime to the Canadien energy company TransCanada filing lawsuits against the Obama administration for having rejected the Keystone XL pipeline.