Economy

Craving an anti-American show where the “elites” are playing ‘god’ without permission? Look no further than Mr. Robot, a drama set to premiere on USA starting June 24, 2015. “Sometimes I dream of saving the world,” the protagonist mused in one of several promotional clips for the show, “Saving everyone from the Invisible Hand - the top 1 percent of the best that play ‘god’ without permission.…

All week, liberals and conservatives have accused each other of causing the longstanding socioeconomic woes of Baltimore. TNR's Rebecca Leber had a subtler take in a Friday piece: she put part of the blame on liberals, but only because they went along with conservative ideas. “Democrats exacerbated these problems [in Baltimore] not by embracing the policies of the left. Rather, they dug the hole…

On Thurday, the government, apparently as determined as the press to create good news where there is none, opened its March report on Personal Income and Outlays as follows: "Personal income increased $6.2 billion, or less than 0.1 percent." Yeah, it was so much less than 0.1 percent that it rounded down to 0.0 percent in current dollars in the table which followed. In real terms, i.e., after…

The so-called experts supposedly took March's worse than usual weather in many parts of the country into account when they predicted that this morning's March Construction Spending report from the Census Bureau would come in with a seasonally adjusted increase of 0.4 percent or 0.5 percent. Instead, the result was a decline 0.6 percent, "unexpectedly" sending that metric to a six-month low.…

During an exclusive interview with former Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Democratic Governor Martin O’Malley on Thursday’s edition of The Lead on CNN, host Jake Tapper asked the possible presidential candidate for what he thinks of “conservatives who say, this shows that liberal policies are failing urban America.” In addition to discussing the protests and rioting in Baltimore and what was then…

One socialist coalition is inadvertently relying on capitalism to protest just that. The World Socialist Web Site and other groups sponsored the International May Day Online rally, which will feature live speeches streaming around the world on May 3, 2015.  The event has many slogans including, “Down with capitalism and imperialism,” and “Unite the working class internationally against war,…

An Associated Press report on small businesses hit with looting, fires and property destruction in Baltimore during the past several days wraps up with a final paragraph only a historically ignorant person could possibly believe. Without getting too personal, David Dishneau and Joyce M. Rosenberg, the two AP writers responsible for that final sentence, appear to be old enough and learned enough…

Apple Inc. is not merely a tech company; it’s also a destroyer of right-wing doctrine. That was the main argument of a Tuesday blog post by Daily Kos founder and publisher Markos Moulitsas. Kos asserted that the huge success of the California-based Apple refutes the “conservatives [who] bray incessantly about the Golden State's ‘high taxes and burdensome regulations.’” He also lauded the company…

In the Wednesday edition of bias by omission, five of the English and Spanish network evening newscasts again refused to report on a troubling sign for the U.S. economy while all six omitted any mention of a new development in the IRS scandal. After completely ignoring the story all together Wednesday morning, the CBS Evening News stepped up to mention that the U.S. economy has screeched to a…

It must be nice to be a leftist Washington politician representing congressional districts in or the entire state of Ohio. You can serially fib about something for years on end, and ordinarily the folks back home won't know any better. Even when you're caught red-handed by the national press occasionally breaking down and doing its job, your area's or the Buckeye State's press will ignore it. A…

Japan just reported yet another awful retail sales result. Though it far exceeeded predictions of a 7.3 percent fall, the 9.7 percent March 2015 plunge compared to March 2014 doesn't reveal much, as March 2014 saw a splurge at the stores ahead of a steep sales tax increase which took effect on April 1. The really telling figure is the 1.9 percent seasonally adjusted dive compared to February.…

Today's Census Bureau report on durable goods orders was like a poorly made cake with delicious frosting: tasty at first, but awful when fully experienced. The frosting in today's report was that overall orders increased in March by a seasonally adjusted 4.0 percent. The trouble is that an important, widely recognized element of that report — what the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger vaguely…

The Census Bureau reported today that sales new homes in the U.S. (seasonally adjusted at an annual rate) plunged sharply in March to 481,000 after hitting a seven-year record level of 543,000 in February. As has been the case so often, AP reporter Josh Boak didn't look past the seasonally adjusted numbers, and as a result gave the "expert" he quoted a free pass to supply sunnyside-up commentary…

Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer hypothesized on Wednesday’s Special Report with Bret Baier that, if Hillary Clinton moves to either support or remain indecisive on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, it “could provoke” liberal Senator Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) to challenge Clinton for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. Despite having previously hailed the…