Dean Baker's Blog, page 167

Robert Samuelson and the Second Great Depression Myth

Robert Samuelson decided to once again push the second Great Depression, applauding the Obama administration for preventing the Great Recession from turning into a depression. This is the great myth (I'm tempted to say "fake news") that establishment types push endlessly with zero foundation.

It is important for the worldview they like to promote, in which we have seen a massive upward redistribution of income over the last four decades, well you know, that's just because that is the way the...

Washington Post Passes Along Mistaken Information on White/Black Employment Rates

It really is hard to kill a false story on the state of the economy. The Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) produced a report which purported to show that minorities were getting all the new jobs created by the economy and that whites were actually losing jobs. This report was made the central theme in a column by Eduardo Porter in the New York Times on Wednesday.

I pointed out that this conclusion was driven by demographics. While the number of prime age (ages 25-54) workers had increa...

The Labor Market Experience of Blacks and Whites Has Been Similar Since the Great Recession

I enjoy reading Eduardo Porter's columns in the NYT and usually learn a lot from them, but I think he has made a mistake in arguing that white workers have fared worse in the recession and recovery than African Americans. In his Wednesday piece, he included a chart showing employment among whites had actually fallen by roughly 700,000 since November of 2007, while it had risen by more than 2 million for both African Americans and Asian-Americans and by twice this amount for Hispanics. This se...

Contrary to What You Read in the Post, Manufacturing Companies Do Not Have That Many Job Openings

A Washington Post article headlined, "why so many U.S. manufacturers are putting up 'help wanted' signs might have led readers to believe that this is a great time for anyone looking for a job in manufacturing. That is not the case, according the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

According to the JOLTS data, the job opening rate in manufacturing has been 2.6 percent for the last three months. This is small decline from the rate earlier in the...

The Job Prospects for Whites are Not Quite as Bad as You Read in the Paper

Eduardo Porter used his column to point out that Donald Trump got support from many whites who felt that they were being left behind. While there is evidence to support this view, one item in the piece may have misled readers.

The column includes a table showing the change in employment since the start of the recession for white, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. While the latter three groups all had increases in employment of at least 2 million, employment for whites fell by almost 1...

Washington Post Accepts Trump Excuse at Face Value

The headline of a Washington Post article told readers:

"Trump is skipping his press conference to focus on his picks for agriculture and the VA."

Of course the Washington Post does not actually know why Donald Trump skipped his press conference. It knows why he said that he skipped his press conference. As the article itself suggests, the reason given for missing the press conference may not in fact be the real reason.

It would be helpful if the Post just reported what it knew to be true rat...

Cokie Roberts Misleads Listeners on Minorities and the Electoral College

Cokie Roberts outlined the history of the Electoral College in a discussion in a Morning Edition segment this morning. At the end of the segment she was asked whether she would favor getting rid of the Electoral College and instead just having presidents elected by the direct popular vote. (Donald Trump lost in this category by more than 2.5 million votes.)

Roberts said no, that she would keep the Electoral College. Strangely, her argument was that she wanted to enhance the importance of mino...

Truth is the First Casualty in Trade Deals

The supporters of the TPP and recent trade deals are licking their wounds and preparing their counter-attack. Rather than thinking about things like maybe structuring trade deals in ways that don't disadvantage large segments of the population (yes, this can be done -- have free trade for doctors and other highly paid professionals and reduce patent and copyright protection -- all in my book, Rigged [it's free]), they are focusing on new messaging for more of the same. The new messaging does...

Private Equity is Not All Hostess Twinkies

The NYT ran a lengthy piece this weekend on how two private equity (PE) firms, Apollo Global Management and Metropoulos & Company, made a huge return on buying up the rights to Hostess Twinkies and a few of the company’s other brands, following the company’s bankruptcy. There are a couple of issues that deserve somewhat further attention than the article gives them.

First, while the article notes that its bankruptcy occurred under the ownership of Ripplewood Holdings, another PE company,...

Waste in the Defense Department: Wrong Context Is Worse Than No Context

This is really embarrassing, I'm having Robert Samuelson do my work for me. His column today pointed out that a Washington Post piece from last week may have misled readers on the amount of waste in the Pentagon's operations.

That article referred to $125 billion in waste that was identified in an internal Pentagon report that was never made public. This figure is then compared with the $580 billion annual budget for the Defense Department.

The problem is that the $125 billion is a cumulative...