Economy

"Sometimes you do wonder if [Republicans] are moles, Manchurian candidates for I don't know who, if their real job is to bring down America." So said New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on MSNBC's Martin Bashir show Friday (video follows with transcript and commentary):

I have a serious question for MSNBC's Chris Matthews: How many lies are you willing to tell on national television to get Barack Obama reelected? On Friday's Hardball, the host gave viewers a plethora of falsehoods and half-truths to giving us an idea of just how far he's prepared to go this election cycle to make sure the objection of his affection remains in the White House (video follows…

Greece is the perfect example of the eventual outcome of unchecked spending – especially as it creeps closer and closer to defaulting on its massive debts, despite multiple government bailouts in May 2011. One recent BBC News headline warned: “Greece: ‘Default within the euro is possible’.” But, looking back, some journalists predicted the opposite: that the Greek economy would survive…

Barack Obama suffered an embarrassing defeat, Wednesday, when the U.S. Senate rejected his budget 99-0. But, you wouldn't know it on ABC or CBS. The two networks completely skipped the political setback. NBC offered a single news brief on Thursday's Today. On that program, news reader Natalie Morales allowed, "The Senate on Wednesday rejected President Obama's 2012 budget, the second year it…

Really, the only surprise is that consumers came before Obama in the headline -- because Obama came before the economy in the underlying article. A late-day dispatch from Jonathan Fahey and Paul Wiseman at the Associated Press even found someone to say that history will be on Obama's side if gas prices fall to below $3.50 a gallon or so by Labor Day. Excerpts follow (bolds are mine):

I just about knew it when I heard a top-of-hour radio report this morning. When the announcer intoned that there was a 3% increase in "home construction" in April, I said to myself: "There's the Associated Press again, up to its old tricks." That was indeed the case. When I went to the related AP reports, I found that they were, like the economic data coming out during the Obama administration…

On Tuesday morning at 8:30 a.m. ET, the Commerce Department reported that seasonally adjusted U.S. retail sales in April rose by 0.1%. In an 11:12 a.m. report via the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, carried at the Detroit News ("U.S. consumers hold back retail sales, even as gas prices fall"), Martin Crutsinger was appropriately not impressed: "Lower gas prices in April weren'…

Here's a word which the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger only used once in his coverage last Thursday of Uncle Sam's April 2012 Treasury Statement: "debt." And when he did, he was quoted someone about Europe's situation. To his credit, the AP reporter wasn't particularly impressed with the fact that the government was able to run a single-month surplus of $59 billion in April. To his…

Fresh off his humiliating defeat on Jeopardy! Monday night, MSNBC's Chris Matthews actually introduced a pair of guests Tuesday as "two of the most smartest people." Almost as funny, "two of the most smartest people" in the Hardball host's opinion are Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Monday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams attempted to conflate the JPMorgan $2 billion loss with Mitt Romney's business record as he declared: "The Obama campaign may have had this JPMorgan story in mind when it picked today to launch a new ad attacking Mitt Romney's former firm, the private equity giant, Bain Capital, as a middle class job killer." Chief White House correspondent…

With Mother's Day right at our back, I want to address one of the most extreme overreaches by the federal government into American homes that I've seen in a long time. Then I want to call on my own 91-year-old mother, who was raised in rural Oklahoma and worked in cotton fields with her family during the Great Depression, to help set straight the rural farm and child labor record. After a…

According to a Rasmussen Poll conducted last March, over 80 percent of likely U.S. voters see the economy as a “very important” issue going into this November.  A strong economy leads to a strong and prosperous country.  A good indicator of the strength of the economy is the number of jobs created.  Despite the national media’s attempt to spin the numbers, the jobs reports for the last two…

A new Obama campaign ad – which CNN showed a clip from on Monday – features former steelworkers attacking Mitt Romney and his leadership of Bain Capital. Yet this January CNN piece on Bain Capital's ventures in South Carolina provided the same critical aura of "bad memories" and "bitterness" toward the company from South Carolina steelworkers. United Steelworkers is one of the heavy hitters…

On Monday's CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose and Erica Hill touted Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren's past time as "the government's chief watchdog during the 2008 bank bailout" as she was brought on to discuss JP Morgan Chase's $2 billion loss. Rose and Hill asked all of their questions from the left, and completely ommited any mention of the recent controversy over Warren's claim of…