Economy

Economic gloomsayer (and New York Times reporter) Vikas Bajaj has made something of a specialty in finding dark clouds in economic silver linings, and Thursday's hypothetical hand-wringing on the front-page of the Business section is no different ("What Could Bog Down the Bull -- Slowing Earnings Threaten to Turn the Easy Going Into a Slog Through Mud")."Stocks surged yesterday afternoon, sending…

The nation’s gross domestic product grew at a much faster than expected rate in the fourth quarter as wages increased and inflationary pressures decreased. Will the media care, or figure out a way to tie consumer enthusiasm to the Democrats taking back Congress?Before you place your bets, let’s look at the facts as reported by Bloomberg (emphasis mine throughout):The U.S. economy grew at a faster…

[UPDATE, 11:07 EST, 1/30/2007: Audio (MP3) and Video (Real Player) (Windows Media) clips now available.]If you wake up on Saturday mornings and flip on the telly hoping to catch solid Wall Street analysis or perhaps a roundup of foreign and domestic business headlines that affect your investment portfolio, don't waste your time with CNN's "In the Money." Rather than looking to help average joes…

PBS tonight airs a documentary on the late Milton Friedman, and perhaps surprisingly enough, the taxpayer-funded network did a good job. [check here for local listings]UPDATE: You know it's gotta be good. NY Times reviewer Ginia Bellafante panned it for being too worshipful of the free market advocate. And yes, your eyes deceive you not, she found a downside to ending the draft (Friedman…

We all know the face of real terror. Nick Berg getting his head sawed off by a knife wielding Islamist, suicide bombers laying waste to mass transit in Israel, the World Trade Towers collapsing on the morning of 09/11/01. That is real terror. But, to Reuters, enforcing U.S. immigration laws is terror. The title of the Reuters piece sets the tone for the overwrought sentiment infused throughout…

CNN anchor Lou Dobbs appeared with the ladies on ABC's The View to deliver some rather liberal opinions. He stumped for a minimum wage increase, railed against the influence big corporations have on politics, and pushed for universal healthcare. Interestingly, Dobbs was not grilled the way Bill O’Reilly was on the same show several months ago. Also of note, the co-hosts did not even touch…

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta found another explanation for why Junior is rolling round the family room with a spare tire: food advertising on the Internet. It gets better. The study he's citing is 6 months old and hails from the liberal Kaiser Family Foundation. What's more, Gupta didn't give any tips for parents about how to regulate their kids Internet use and only gave 6 seconds to an advertising…

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its monthly report on "mass layoffs" yesterday. It also included annual totals and an eleven-year chart of mass layoff history. A "mass layoff action" involves "at least 50 persons from a single establishment." Since 1988, employers have been required to give 60 days notice of "covered plant closings and covered mass layoffs." The BLS Mass Layoffs…

On January 18, CBSNews.com posted an interview that "Public Eye" blogger Brian Montopoli conducted with business correspondent Anthony Mason. In the interview, Mason explained how he wound up reporting the business beat and why he thinks the media have a tendency to be critical of business, as well as admitting that the media in general have a liberal bias in story selection. You can find the…

CORRECTION: An earlier post incorrectly said none of the evening newscasts carried a mention of the falling gas prices. I apologize for the error.Gasoline costs nearly 20 cents less than it did the same time last year, but the good news merited only a passing mention on the night before President Bush’s State of the Union address. By contrast, the networks spent more than 10 minutes…

One of my correspondents on my own site, Publius' Forum, has been trying to clear up a wretched email that was sent to one of our boys in Iraq refusing him service and telling him he should "pull out of Iraq". Fox News has picked up this story that I have been watching for a few days. I've been trying to ascertain if it was real or another example of an internet hoax -- sometimes it isn't easy…