That's effectively what the Washington Post told readers in another front page editorial highlighting the need for deficit reduction. The article said: "But by suggesting the deficit may have peaked, administration officials are taking a political gamble. If the favorable number does not hold up in coming months and the budget shortfall surpasses the $1.4 trillion recorded last year, voters in the November midterm elections could punish the Democrats for offering false hope." That's a great story. Is it plausible that even 1 percent of voters are going to have any clue as to whether this year's deficit is marginally higher or marginally lower than last year's deficit? Is there any reason that anyone should care? Is there any evidence that this will influence their vote in an environment where they are concerned about their jobs and their homes? In the Post's dreams maybe, but not on this planet. --Dean Baker

In an article reporting on the debate over extending unemployment insurance benefits the Washington Post told readers: "on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned that growing budget deficits imperiled the economy's long-term stability." It is worth noting that in his capacity as a Federal Reserve Board governor from 2002 to 2005, chief economic adviser President Bush, and then Fed Chair since January of 2006, Bernanke never raised any concerns about the housing bubble and the threat it posed to the economy. Based on this history, readers may question Mr. Bernanke's ability to assess threats to economic stability. The Post should have informed readers of Bernanke's record on this issue. --Dean Baker

Those are the questions that readers of the WAPO's Sunday Outlook section must be asking. The Post told readers that: "this year, China's economy is expected to produce about $5 trillion in goods and services. That would put it ahead of Japan as the world's second-biggest national economy, but it would still be barely one-third the size of the $14 trillion U.S. economy." This reflects China's GDP measured on an exchange rate basis. However, economists typically use purchasing power parity measures of GDP for international comparisons. By this measure, China's economy is expected to be about $9.5 trillion this year . At its current growth rate, it will pass the size of the U.S. economy in about five years. By many measures it is already larger than the U.S.. For example, it has more Internet users, college graduates in science and engineering, a larger car market, and about twice as many cell phone users. The article also tells readers that the exchange rate will not have much impact...

This would have been a better headline for the Washington Post article on the testimony before the crisis commission of Fannie's former chief executive as well its top regulator. The discussion before the commission was apparently whether Fannie and Freddie were motivated by profit when they moved into Alt-A mortgages in 2005 and 2006 or whether they were trying to fulfill their mission of increasing homeownership. While there may be some debate over individual motivations, the obvious point that apparently went unmentioned in this article was that if the executives at Fannie and Freddie were not totally clueless about the housing market, they would have been cutting back on buying mortgages altogether in 2005 and 2006, when house prices were at levels badly inflated by the bubble. It was guaranteed that prices would drop and a high percentage of even traditional prime mortgages would go bad. In this environment, the responsible route for Fannie and Freddie would have been to only...

The Washington Post (a.k.a. Fox on 15th) feels so strongly that we should reduce the budget deficit that they ran yet another front page editorial on the topic. The piece told readers in the second paragraph: "This mounting government debt poses a painful choice for developed countries such as Britain, Japan and the United States: either a deep reordering of public expectations about everything from the retirement age to tax rates, or slower growth as record levels of borrowing crimp economic activity." Well, that's pretty clear. The Washington Post told us in no uncertain terms that things will have to be pretty bad, no two ways about it. Only those who bothered to read to page two would find out that there is actually considerable uncertainty about the point at which debt really poses a serious burden on the economy. On page two they would discover the United States actually had a debt to GDP ratio that was nearly twice as high as it is presently. This did not prevent it from having...

That is the only thing that readers can conclude from a statement in an article on Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke's urgings to reduce the deficit. The WSJ told readers that: "The government is running a budget deficit in excess of about $1.3 trillion, more than 10% of the nation's total economic output." Of course, the Commerce Department is telling us that GDP for the fourth quarter of 2009 was $14.5 trillion, which would mean that the deficit is less than 9.0 percent of GDP. This trouble with numbers carries over to the substance of the piece which is supposed to be that the country faces an imminent crisis in being able to sell its debt. It warns readers that: "yields on 10-year Treasury notes have risen from around 3.25% in late November to just under 3.9% today, in part because of concerns in credit markets about the mountains of government debt investors are being asked to buy to fund U.S deficits." Hmmm, we are paying 3.9 interest because there are concerns in...