Economy

To err is human, but some errors are more obvious than others. One pretty obvious error occurred Tuesday at the Associated Press. It involved veteran economics reporter Christopher Rugaber, who somehow assumed that the August increase in home prices recorded in a well-known index published on Tuesday primarily occurred because of "solid sales." The problem is that seasonally adjusted existing…

If you're a few hours late catching up on reports on economic data at the Associated Press, one of the best ways to determine whether the news was good or disappointing is to see whether the story's headline and opening blurb are still present about four hours later among the wire service's "Top (usually 10) Business News" items. The good-news items will usually still be there; the disappointing…

Today saw yet another "unexpected" disappointing development in the U.S. economy. The Census Bureau reported that seasonally adjusted sales of new homes, an area thought to be a bright spot, declined sharply in September to an annual rate 468,000 from 529,000 in August. The bureau also revised July and August significantly downward. As bad as the as the adjusted numbers were, the raw data was…

Late Sunday evening, the United Auto Workers and General Motors reached a tentative four-year agreement shortly before the union's 11:59 p.m. strike deadline. The agreement was expected, simply because the financial and political blowback of a strike at a company bailed out by taxpayers at a cost running into tens of billion of dollars back in 2009 would have been severe. Also expected: the…

Appearing as a guest on Friday's Tavis Smiley show on PBS, actor Dick Van Dyke spoke of his support for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, and oddly complained that it is "incendiary" for his critics to call him a "socialist," even though Sanders labels himself a "democratic socialist." Van Dyke then declared that "we're a fairly socialist government already." The veteran actor, who is…

The news coming out of Detroit about near-deadline negotiations between the United Auto Workers union and General Motors has been pretty quiet. As the Sunday 11:59 p.m. deadline approaches, the Associated Press only has a four-paragraph blurb indicating that the union wants to get a richer package than it just garnered in negotiations with Fiat Chrysler. A Reuters report goes into detail about GM…

After Paul Ryan vowed that he wouldn’t reduce time spent with his family even if he became Speaker of the House, quite a few liberals accused the Wisconsin congressman of hypocrisy given that he has, in the words of one feminist site, “spent much of his political career fighting laws that promote realistic work-life balance for parents.” Lefty pundit Marcotte believes that Ryan is even worse…

Talk about politics making strange bedfellows . . . Joe Scarborough has said that when he goes back to Washington, DC, his "best friends" are "liberal Democrats."  The one person Scarborough singled out to illustrate this was Maxine Waters, mentioning that he hugs her on the House floor. Scarborough's statement came during a pre-recorded New Hampshire town hall with John Kasich that aired on…

The folks at the Associated Press aren't even trying to disguise how pleased they are after Canada's most recent elections swept the Liberal Party into power after almost a decade in the wilderness. They're claiming that victorious Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems destined to ignite the second installment of "Trudeaumania," the late-1960s press anointing which accompanied his father Pierre…

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.)…

Hillary Clinton was in Alabama a few days ago. As she has in the past at least two other times when south of the Mason-Dixon line, she decided that she could drop the letter "g" from several of her "i-n-g" words while affecting a sort-of Southern accent. This time she was in Alabama. Mrs. Clinton cut the "g" from the at least the following words she has no trouble fully pronouncing when she's in…

After restaurateur Danny Meyer decided to stop tipping at his restaurants last week, the question of whether or not tipping should be banned has been pushed to the forefront in the mainstream media. So, should restaurants ban tipping?  Apparently economics journalist Stephen J. Dubner thinks so, citing everything from economics to racism as to why tipping should be done away with all together. …

An exchange from the Democratic debate involving Scandinavian economic superiority caught the elitist attention of economist turned Democratic political hack Paul Krugman. Bernie Sanders opined: "We should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people." That gave Krugman all the wedge to snobbily celebrate little…

Thursday, Venkatesh Rao wrote in the Atlantic that "Solving Climate Change Will Be Like Mobilizing for War." Rao examined multiple points in history where businesses and scientific experts worked together to overcome barriers and change society through innovation. However, he then declared Climate Change to be too big for those forces after the recent Volkswagen Scandal of rigging technology to…