Personal Finance

On October 3, the National Retail Federation projected that "sales in the months of November and December" will "marginally increase 3.9 percent to $602.1 billion, over 2012’s actual 3.5 percent holiday season sales growth." But on October 16, it warned that "the average holiday shopper will spend $737.95 on gifts, décor, greeting cards and more, two percent less than the $752.24 they actually…

You would think that economic forecasters, who have been obsessing over the impact on economic growth of October's 17 percent partial government shutdown might have noticed that a lot of people have all of a sudden learned that they're about to experience a major cut in their take-home pay. You would be wrong. Hundreds of thousands of Americans had received health insurance cancellation…

Kathleen Pender at the San Francisco Chronicle (HT Zombie at PJ Media) had some Obamacare-related financial advice for her readers on Saturday: "Consider reducing your 2014 income by working just a bit less," because doing so could get you a "huge health care subsidy." This is not news to anyone who has studied Obamacare in detail, and shouldn't be a revelation to anyone in the business press…

PBS's Tavis Smiley made a comment Thursday that every African-American as well as liberal media member should sit up and take notice. Appearing on Fox News's Hannity, Smiley said, "The data is going to indicate sadly that when the Obama administration is over, black people will have lost ground in every single leading economic indicator category" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It's almost amusing to watch writers like Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, pretend not to understand why the economy isn't growing as much as one would "expect" based on the number of jobs being added each month and falling weekly unemployment claims. In a Thursday story which was mostly worthless because the incompletely collected government data…

Potentially the most dishonest aspect of the Obama-loving media's reporting since January 20, 2009, pertains to how they've almost totally ignored how poorly the economy is performing. On Tuesday, Michael T. Snyder, author of the gloom and doom book "The Beginning of the End," wrote a fabulous piece titled "33 Shocking Facts Which Show How Badly The Economy Has Tanked Since Obama Became…

MSNBC has apparently realized that Americans are not concerned about the sequester, so the Lean Forward network has made another attempt to convince us how terrible it really is. In an article published Monday on msnbc.com, writer Timothy Noah sent readers a grim message that was summed up in the article’s title: “The Sequester Isn’t Hurting You? Think Again.” Noah struck a strikingly…

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman takes positive glee in attacking Republicans on almost a daily basis. In a piece published Monday entitled "Hunger Games, USA," Krugman disgracefully said the GOP "takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering on the already miserable":

Left-wing journalist Bill Moyers made a truly ludicrous attempt on Monday to twist the meaning of a particular two-word phrase. It happened while he was appearing on PBS’s Charlie Rose show to promote an upcoming documentary in which he tells the stories of two struggling families in Milwaukee. Looking the host in the eye, Moyers warned, “Never underestimate the power of learned helplessness…

Ralph Nader last week had some harsh words for the current President of the United States. Appearing on Democracy Now!, Nader asked host Amy Goodman, "Has there been a bigger con man in the White House than Barack Obama?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Recent college grads are in a tough spot, with student loans that need repayment and an economy that is leaving many of them underemployed or worse. But the network news media have exaggerated individual burdens of student debt by using examples of enormous rather than average debts. They’ve also often ignored systemic problems that have led to the “crisis” of student loan defaults, at the same…

NewsBusters readers know that one of the problems in this country is that liberal media members use a form of math much different than any of us learned in school. Take CBS's Norah O'Donnell for example who on Sunday's Face the Nation actually said that a one percent raise is a pay cut (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported earlier, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough had quite a heated discussion about the budget, debt, and the economy on PBS's Charlie Rose Monday evening. Near its conclusion, Scarborough actually scolded Krugman for pompously behaving like a sighing Al Gore (video follows with transcript and commentary):

"We're all socialists from the day we're born. You know, you don't have to be poor or unemployed to be on Welfare. We're all at the trough. We're all Welfare queens." So said TIME magazine executive editor Michael Duffy on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show Sunday (video follows with transcript and commentary):