Economy

It's not a stretch to believe that the folks at the Associated Press would rather not report bad news from that communist workers' paradise known as Cuba. Just look at how the wire service has dealt with clearly significant news about the island nation's economy. Though the news, carried originally at the Miami Herald, is three months old, the AP as best I can tell finally got around to writing…

There are two different ways of defining a recession. The Associated Press is using one of them to define its beginning, and the other to define its end. Using the former makes George Bush look bad; using the latter makes Barack Obama look good. Imagine that. The traditional definition of "recession," which is used as the official metric in the vast majority of countries around the world, is…

Chrystia Freeland, global editor-at-large for Reuters, believes the new financial regulations are still pretty loose."It is still a very feudal, very Byzantine regulatory system," Freeland complained on the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, referring to the Senate's approval of a financial regulations bill yesterday.A radical policy, Freeland maintained, could have done away with the current "…

Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos on Friday offered White House spin for the passage of financial reform, enthusing, "...You've got the well looking like it's capped. Passage of financial reform. Big day for the White House." Over two segments, he touted Obama's take: "But, the President called it a big win for the whole country." Talking to Jake Tapper, the former Democratic operative…

UPDATE, JULY 18: This post was based in an Associated Press's quote of a statement President Obama made to NBC News that "my policies ... got us out of this mess." Subsequent review of the video and transcript of that interview shows that the President really said "my policies ... are getting us out of this mess." I have prepared a follow-up post dealing with this matter and a separate…

It's bad enough the federal government's official budget deficit has topped $1 trillion for the second year in a row, according to the just-released June 2010 Monthly Treasury Statement. But, focusing only on receipts for the moment, a closer look makes it obvious that the situation is even worse than it appears. Don't expect the establishment press to take any interest in the annoying but…

Reporting Thursday from Capitol Hill, MSNBC congressional correspondent Luke Russert touted a likely win for Senate Democrats on the Financial Reform Bill, saying it would be a "huge victory.""Obviously, [President Obama] ran on the slogan 'Change you can believe in,' with health care reform and financial regulatory reform," Russert commented, thus tying the passage of the financial reform bill…

UPDATE - 7/15, 7:00 PM: Politico makes a nearly identical argument. Ace tears it to shreads. Details below. The folks at ABC News are confused. Democrats are passing all this awesome legislation, they posit, so why are Americans acting so hostile and looking to hand Congress to the GOP? The key problems, ABC's Z. Byron Wolf deduces, are that Democrats simply have not embraced liberalism enough…

MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan appeared on Morning Joe, Wednesday, to dismiss Barack Obama as a "little boy" in the eyes of Wall Street and to assert the President "just bends over," rather than stand up to the financial industry. [Audio available here.]The charged language surprised host Joe Scarborough who sputtered, "You know, I was so uncomfortable with a couple of the things you said and then the…

Liberal talk radio host Bill Press says President Obama's poll numbers are down because Americans are spoiled, impatient children that want everything solved yesterday.After describing to his listeners Tuesday all the fabulous accomplishments this president has made since taking office in January 2009, Press admonished the citizenry for giving the White House resident poor grades for his efforts…

Once again, it's clear that reading editorials and op-eds at publications like the Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily becomes a requirement to be truly informed when a Democratic administration in power. On July 6, Peter Ferrara at IBD noted that the annual report from the trustees of the Social Security and Medicare system is long overdue, and wondered why: Are Overdue Reports…

Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday spun a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, emphasizing problems for the Republican Party over dour news for Barack Obama. The co-host ignored a finding that likely voters want the GOP to take control of Congress by a margin of 56 to 41. He did, however, repeat the lower number of registered voters who prefer the Republicans, 51 percent.…

On Saturday's CBS Evening News, anchor Jeff Glor decided what should be at the top of Congress's agenda as it returned from the July 4th recess: "Congress returns to Washington next week to face a big backlog of unfinished business, and topping the list is the future of unemployment benefits."In a report that followed, senior White House correspondent Bill Plante chided elected officials for…

While Washington lawmakers may be deadlocked over extending unemployment benefits, the liberal media are picking up the slack and helping unemployed individuals find more government help. In a July 13 story on CNNMoney.com, reporter Hibah Yousuf profiled two individuals who've been unemployed for over 99 weeks, the maximum number of weeks a person is eligible for unemployment benefits. Yousuf…