Economy

Bob Schieffer all but broke out the death certificate for Mitt Romney's campaign on Tuesday's CBS Evening News and Wednesday's CBS This Morning, emphasizing the negative impact of the secretly-recorded videos released by the left-wing magazine Mother Jones: "I just can't think of anything that he could have said that could have hurt his cause more than what he said." Schieffer claimed that "…

"Compared to George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, Obama has been more fiscally conservative than any other president in recent history, with the exception of President Bill Clinton." Despite over $5 trillion in new debt created by the 44th president, so hysterically wrote Barbra Streisand at the Huffington Post Tuesday.

Syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan made a statement on Fox News's On the Record Tuesday that is guaranteed to raise eyebrows on both sides of the aisle. Speaking with host Greta Van Susteren about how Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's remarks concerning the 47 percent of the nation that don't pay federal income taxes were spot on, Buchanan called Barack Obama a "Fabian Socialist"…

It was probably an accident, but the Associated Press's headline writers, in framing the wire service's story about Fedex's quarterly results and economic outlook released earlier today, created a headline that the Obama administration will find completely unhelpful: "FEDEX SAYS ECONOMY IS STALLING, CUTS OUTLOOK." Most U.S. readers and probably most of AP's subscribing print, online, and…

Let's see. The supposed consensus at Real Clear Politics shows Mitt Romney trailing Barack Obama by less than three points. As shown yesterday, one of the most recent five polls used in RCP's calculations from CBS and the New York Times is so cooked that it weighted registered Democrats over registered Republicans by 35%-22% -- so you can easily knock more than a point from Obama's lead for…

BizzyBlog and NewsBusters commenter dscott brought an item at a Washington Post business blog to my attention earlier today. Entitled "Fed action a welcome move for small businesses" and appearing very early this morning, it claims that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's third round of quantitative easing, aka QE3, is "confidence-building move" and "a reassuring sign to the financial…

NBC Tonight Show host Jay Leno made a joke Monday about President Obama and the economy that would be funny if it didn't hit so close to home. Talking about how the unemployment rate only fell last month because of the number of people that dropped out of the labor force, Leno quipped that the President is "encouraging more Americans to give up looking for work so the numbers will come down a…

Yesterday, Uncle Sam's Monthly Treasury Statement for August officially confirmed the Congressional Budget Office's Monday estimate of how horrid it would be. The August deficit, driven by $369.393 billion in spending, the highest such single-month total in U.S. history, was $190.533 billion, the largest August deficit ever reported. Naturally, Daniel Wagner at the Associated Press failed to…

Ever since his early days as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama has had a penchant for creating straw men out of his opponents' policy ideas and then arguing against his fictictious version of their viewpoints. He's been very careful to do this of late in the area of taxes. While he likely wants to raise income taxes on all taxpayers similar to the other taxes he's raised on health…

Whoever wrote the Associated Press's brief dispatch yesterday on the results of the government's auction of 10-year Treasury notes seemed to be stunned and on the defensive about its result. The item, entitled "Weak Demand at Auction of 10-Year U.S. Treasury Debt," began as follows: "U.S. Treasury prices dived Wednesday after an auction of 10-year notes drew very weak demand, signaling a lack…

Meet the Press host David Gregory said Wednesday, "A lot of corporate America is waiting for Romney to get elected rather than another term of Obama." Speaking with Jimmy Fallon on NBC's Late Night, Gregory added, "That may unleash a little bit more progress" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In her writeup covering the Census Bureau's latest release of income and poverty data, Hope Yen at the Associated Press quoted University of Michigan economist Sheldon Danziger, who specializes in "Applied Policy, Labor Markets, Poverty and Social Welfare," describing the news that the official poverty rate was statistically unchanged, moving from 15.1% of all Americans to 15.0%, as "good news…

Bob Woodward singled out congressional Republicans as the main party to blame for the 2011 debt ceiling showdown during an interview on Wednesday's CBS This Morning and minimized President Obama and Senate Democrats's responsibility regarding the looming fiscal cliff: "The Republicans are like a brick wall, and it's very difficult to deal with them." Woodward also bemoaned that the press…

Former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania turned MSNBC contributor Ed Rendell said something on Tuesday's Hardball that is going to make a lot of jaws drop. "Even people who lost their jobs are better off" under Obama (video follows with transcript and commentary):