Economy

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on Friday said the reason so many Republicans are opposed to the Federal Reserve's new monetary stimulus scheme of quantitative easing is because they really want the economy to stay weak in order to harm President Obama. Readers are advised to strap themselves in tightly in preparation for the paranoid lunacy on display:

  On Thursday’s Countdown show on MSNBC, after guest Howard Fineman of the Huffington Post predicted that Republican Congressmen would be reluctant to extend unemployment benefits, host Keith Olbermann asserted that, referring to congressional Republicans, "They don't live in this world. They don't live in this country. And I think we'd be better off if they didn't live in this country."…

Gosh, what's a bigger story -- that to the extent it was ever happening at all the housing recovery "seems to have been aborted," or that according to the government there was very little inflation in October?

On Sunday, NBC Universal launched its annual "Green Week," as part of the company's "Green is Universal" environmental awareness campaign. As NBC embarks on yet another week of "environmentally themed programming," it falls to media watchdogs to point out the massive conflict presented by NBC parent company General Electric's significant financial interests in the policies "Green Week"…

Yesterday the California Supreme Court ruled "that illegal immigrants are entitled to the same in-state tuition breaks that are offered to citizens who attend public colleges and universities." The Associated Press reports that "[t]he high court unanimously upheld a state law that says any student, regardless of immigration status, who attended a California high school for at least three…

For the second time in two days, Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday lobbied for tax increases, wondering why it's "okay" for the "wealthiest Americans" to continue to receive a tax cut. The GMA host pushed Congresswoman Michele Bachmann to accept a deal in exchange for extending the Bush tax cuts. After the conservative leader expressed skepticism about extending…

Every week, we receive more bad news about the American economy. Last week was no exception. The Fed began monetizing the national debt, while China's gross domestic product for the third quarter expanded 8.9 percent from the previous quarter, Dagong (the Chinese quasi-government ratings agency) downgraded the credit rating of the United States, and billionaire George Soros expanded his…

Former top Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos on Monday pestered his old White House colleague Erskine Bowles on the need to let the Bush tax cuts expire. The Good Morning America co-host also touted the critique of liberal columnist Paul Krugman in opposition to a panel calling for deficit reduction. Stephanopoulos pushed Bowles, the co-chairman of the National Commission on Fiscal…

I guess after about a year and a half of dancing around the truth, the Associated Press decided that confession of some of the truth about Government/General Motors is good for the soul. Conveniently, the AP's de facto partial confession, delivered via reporter Sharon Silke Carty, comes as the success of the company's initial public offering seems assured. Carty's confession consists of…

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Sunday claimed the President's stimulus plan combined with 2008's Troubled Assets Relief Program resulted in ten million jobs being saved. Such was actually said on CBS's "Face the Nation" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

UPDATE AT END OF POST: Krugman tries to clarify what he said. Although he was likely taking a swipe at former governor Sarah Palin with the reference, Paul Krugman on Sunday recommended "death panels" as a means of helping to balance the federal budget. In a Roundtable discussion on ABC's "This Week," the New York Times columnist said of what recently came out of the President's deficit…

When you increase demand for something, its price should go up. In the case of bonds, if the demand for them increases, their price should go up, and their effective interest-rate yield should go down. That didn't happen on Friday when the Federal Reserve began executing its second round of "money from nothing" quantitative easing. Even though the Fed increased demand, bond prices went down…

Don't go overboard with it, but have some pity on Sewell Chan at the New York Times. On Thursday evening online and in Friday's print edition, Chan was among three Times reporters who composed a report ripping President Obama's lack of results at the G-20 summit. The piece's original title -- "Obama's Economic View is Rejected on World Stage" -- originally appeared online and actually made…

Glenn Beck has been a favorite punching bag for liberal media members since he moved from HLN to Fox News and started getting huge ratings. The folks at NBC's "Saturday Night Live" have also been on this Beck bashing bandwagon, which made the following sequence during Saturday's opening sketch rather surprising (video follows with transcript and commentary):