AP Blames '(Good) Weather' For April Decline in Industrial Production
It looks like the "weather" excuse the press went to repeatedly to explain weak economic results in December, and January, and February, and March still has life in April. But this time, warm weather (which most of us would find "good," at least in April) is to blame. An early afternoon report (relevant portion saved here in graphic form) on the Dow's 200-point mid-day dip by the Associated…
Robert Reich: Spread Ownership Because ‘Whole Country Ought to Be Pa
Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich made a very curious statement on Monday’s Morning Joe. During a roundtable discussion on income inequality, former congressman Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) asked Reich what policies, besides raising the minimum wage, the government should employ in order to improve economic mobility and increase middle class purchasing power. [Video below. MP3 audio here…
Poll Showing Most Americans Believe Economy Is and Will Stay in Poor S
One thing the establishment press will not be celebrating this evening as we head into 2014 is the fact that they have been unable to convince the American people that the economy has been and will continue to be on the rebound.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released on Friday, which "oddly enough" (no, not really) is not being touted at ORC's related press release web page, shows…
Greenspan: ‘Government Intervention Has Been So Horrendous' Business
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan made some rather ominous economic observations Sunday.
Appearing on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, Greenspan said, “[T]he level of uncertainty about the very long-term future is far greater than at any time I particularly remember.” He blamed it on “government intervention [that] has been so horrendous that businesses cannot basically decide what to…
As With CNN Email This Afternoon, AP's Rothwell Also Makes a Market De
As I noted in a previous previous post today (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), a CNNMoney.com email tried to spin a 0.4% decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and tiny drops of less than 0.1% in the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ into proof that the government shutdown and the "looming U.S. default" were having awful effects on investors. Given that the ADP Employment Report today was a…
CNN Email: Market's Tiny Wed. Losses Due to 'Looming U.S. Default,' No
NASDAQ.com says that the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 58.56 points today. The S&P 500 lost 1.13 points, while the NASDAQ lost 2.96 points. In percentage terms, those losses were 0.39%, 0.07%, and 0.08%, respectively.
Even though there's usually a large element of speculation relating to why the broad markets go up or down on any given day, the pretend know-it-alls at CNNMoney.…
Media's Doom and Gloom Predictions Wrong Again, Markets Shrug Off Gove
For weeks Americans have been told that if Congress and the White House didn't agree to a Continuing Resolution to fund the government when the new fiscal year started on October 1, an economic calamity would befall the nation.
Well, the government officially shut down at midnight Monday, and markets all around the world don't seem to care.
Financial Markets Aren't Buying Media's Government Shutdown Hysteria
If you listened to Obama-loving media members in recent weeks, the end of the world happens midnight Monday if Republicans don't agree to immediately fund the government.
Yet with a shutdown only hours away now, the financial markets clearly don't seem to be at all concerned that what is happening in Washington will have much of an impact on the economy.
In Covering the Week's Market Decline, AP's Freed Uses Possible Govern
Joshua Freed's Friday afternoon report on the week's results in the stock market at the Associated Press spent nine paragraphs telling readers how the current budget battle in Washington and possible government shutdown are causing stocks to retreat.
Though he obviously didn't admit it, Freed's narrative fell apart in later paragraphs as he discussed "mixed economic signals" which aren't mixed…
Bloomberg Goes All Pravda: 'America Resilient Five Years After Great R
There are two key words missing from the report Bloomberg's Kasia Klimasinska & Shobhana Chandra published Tuesday morning — a writeup that is so incredibly sunny and over-the-top that is probably would have embarrassed the Old Soviet Union's Pravda in its heyday.
One is "income." The reason is obvious. Real median household income is still way below where it was when the recession ended…
Yet Another 'Unexpectedly' Sighting; Durable Goods Orders Fell 7.3% in
Anyone remember all the huffing and puffing from the establishment press about how third-quarter economic growth was going to be great — so please stop worrying about how weak the past three quarters (annualized rates of 0.1%, 1.1%, and 1.7%, respectively) have been?
Oops. On Friday, the Census Bureau reported that new-home sales dropped over 20% in July to an annual rate of 394,000 from June…
Bernanke's 'If We Were to Tighten, the Economy Would Tank' Comment Ign
Today, as the wire service AFP reported in a story carried at Yahoo.com, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in the question and answer exchange after his prepared testimony, told the House Financial Services Committee that "If we were to tighten (monetary) policy, the economy would tank."
That assessment of the economy's fragility qualifies as news, especially given the Obama…
Whining Spitzer, Who Beat the Rap Because of Who He Is: Zimmerman Verd
On ABC's This Week yesterday, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer -- who resigned in 2008 when caught dead to rights illegally purchasing the services of prostitutes but was never prosecuted because, as announced two days after Election Day in 2008, the Department of Justice decided that "the public interest would not be further advanced by filing criminal charges" -- called the verdict in…
Thom Hartmann Hates Insider Trading by Politicians, Except Pelosi
As timing would have it, my 12-year-old daughter read Orwell's "Animal Farm" for school just before I encountered an eerily similar human version of one of its characters.
Do you remember Squealer, the propagandist for the pigs who ran the farm after the animals seized control of the property? He was described as "a brilliant talker" who when arguing "had a way of skipping from side to side…
