Dean Baker's Blog, page 534

Washington Post Calls Jobs Report Better than Incompetent Economists Had Expected

The headline of the front page article in the Washington Post told readers that the September jobs report from the Labor Department "offers a respite." It added that the report, "was merely mediocre, not the horrible result that some economists had feared."

In fact, this was a very bad jobs report. The report showed that the economy created just 103,000 jobs in September, 45,000 of which were Verizon workers who were returning from being on strike in August and were therefore not counted in t...

Is It Possible that the Jobs Numbers Would Not Provide Ammunition to Republicans?

The NYT told readers that:

"The tepid jobs report provided more ammunition for Mr. Obama's Republican rivals, who seized on Friday's results as further evidence of what they say is the president's ineffective stewardship of the economy."

This is true, the Republicans did blame President Obama for the weak economy. Of course President Obama requested more stimulus than Congress approved and he just asked for another round of stimulus that would likely involve more money in 2012 than his...

Argentina's Problem Was an Over-Valued Dollar, Not Inflation

In an otherwise thoughtful column comparing the current situation with Greece and its options for leaving the euro with the situation of Argentina in its 1998-2002 crisis, Floyd Norris gets a fundamental fact wrong. Norris told readers:

"In 2002, Argentina's currency, the peso, was officially tied to the dollar at a one-to-one parity. There was a "currency board" that was supposed to assure the tie could never be broken, and it had worked for a decade. But Argentine inflation had outpaced...

Dana Milbank Does What the Media Is Supposed to Do to Politicians Who Just Make Things Up

Dana Milbank had a solid column today. He ridiculed Republican claims that President Obama's health care plan is responsible for high unemployment. Milbank showed that the claims put forward by leading Republican politicians lacked any and for the most part defied commonsense.

For example, one business owner with 50 employees claimed that he could not hire another worker because this would make him subject to provisions in the bill that apply to firms with 51 or more employees. However...

Is There Anyone Other than the NYT Who Wants to See a Lehman-Type Collapse In Europe?

In a front page news analysis the NYT told readers that:

"but these days the problem for Europe may be that it has not had — and may not have — its own Lehman Brothers, at least in the sense that Lehman shocked Americans to take divisive and expensive steps to repair the damage."

There is no one cited in the article who says anything like this. In the wake of the Lehman collapse, the economy lost more than 700,000 jobs a month over the next nine months. While much of this job loss was...

British Prime Minister David Cameron Doesn't Know Economics, Where Is the Ridicule?

The NYT reported that British Prime Minister David Cameron was prepared to give a speech in which he would call on households and businesses to pay down their debt rather than spend. This amounts to a gaffe of enormous proportions. It implies that the Prime Minister overseeing one of the world's largest economies has no clue about economics. If households and businesses responded to the prime minister's request, it would further reduce demand leading to a second recession and a further rise i...

Why Do Trade Agreements Have to be "Free?"

Why can't the NYT just call the trade agreements being sent to the senate "trade" agreements? Why does it feel the need to mislead readers in the headline and several times in the article itself by calling them "free trade" agreements?

These deals do not free all trade. There will still be plenty of protectionist barriers left in place that will make it difficult for doctors, lawyers and other professionals from these countries from working in the United States. Furthermore the deals...

The IMF, ECB, and EC are Prepared to Wreck the World Economy to Squeeze a Few Extra Dollars Out of Greece

The NYT piece on the failure of Greece to meet its deficit targets and the response by the IMF, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission should have included a comment from someone pointing out that these institutions are jeopardizing the growth prospects for the world economy in order to try to squeeze some additional money out of Greece for its creditors.

The risk of a Greek default is leading to soaring interest rates on the debt of several euro zone countries and creates a r...

How Did the NYT Determine that the U.S. Has a Budget Crisis?

The paper doesn't tell its readers how it made the determination that the country faces a budget crisis, but this did not prevent it from telling readers in both a headline and an article's first sentence that there is a budget crisis. The NYT's assessment certainly differs sharply from the assessment of financial markets in this respect. They are willing to lend the U.S. government trillions of dollars at interest rates of less than 2.0 percent on 10-year bonds. If the financial markets shar...

The ECB and Friends Are Responsible for Greece Not Meeting Their Conditions

It would have been helpful if the NYT had made this point in an article that discussed the failure of Greece to meet deficit targets set by the "troika," the European Central Bank (ECB), the IMF, and the European Commission. The austerity conditions that the troika imposed on Greece and its trading partners coupled with excessively restrictive monetary policy by the ECB has slowed growth within Greece. 

While the article notes that the slower than expected growth is the cause of Greece...