The NYT told readers that home sales are surging in advance of the April 30th expiration of the extended first-time homebuyers tax credit. While it is reasonable to expect somewhat of a surge, there is actually very little evidence of one this far. The Mortgage Bankers Association mortgage applications index has been running substantially below last year's depressed levels. The vast majority of homebuyers will be taking out mortgages, so if this index is depressed, it suggests that there is not yet any surge in buying. The evidence presented in the article is that home sales in several cities were considerably higher in February than January. This is not evidence of an upturn in sales. This is a normal seasonal pattern, as home sales bottom out in the winter. (It is possible that the data presented in the article is seasonally adjusted, although the piece does not indicate that it is.) --Dean Baker

On April 1, 1996, way before anyone heard of a blog, Beat the Press began as a weekly commentary called "Reading Between the Lines" on the Economic Policy Institute's website. I started writing it because I felt that major media outlets were often obscuring rather than explaining major economic issues. Since then BTP has gone through many format and name changes. When Mark Weisbrot and I founded the Center for Economic and Policy Research over 10 years ago, it moved with me and was renamed the "Economic Reporting Review," or ERR (the acronym was not an accident), and in its tenth year BTP got its current name, became a daily blog, and joined the Tapped lineup at The American Prospect. I want to express my gratitude to TAP for hosting Beat the Press and exposing it to its well-informed and thoughtful readership over the past four years. On April 1, 2010, its 14th anniversary, Beat the Press will be coming home to the Center for Economic and Policy Research's website. Again, I'd like to...

The Washington Post is anxious to tell its readers that the government made a profit on its bailout of Citigroup. This claim gives a whole new meaning to the notion of "profit." The government gave enormous amounts of money to Citigroup through various direct and indirect channels. It is only getting a portion of this money back in its "profits," the rest is going to Citigroup's shareholders (e.g. Robert Rubin) and its millionaire executives who are highly skilled at getting the government to hand them money. First, it is worth noting how the government got the shares of common stock which it is now selling for a profit. On November 23, 2008, the government bought $20 billion in preferred shares in Citigroup. It also received another $7 billion in preferred shares in exchange for guarantees on $300 billion in bad assets. At the time, the combined value of the investment in preferred shares and the guarantee on bad assets exceeded the full market value of Citigroup stock on November...

How many NYT readers know how large $500 million is as a share of California's budget? How about $370 million a share of Texas' budget. My guess is that almost no one outside of the people who live in these states (and probably not even many of them) has any clue as to how large these sums are to the state governments. This means that when the NYT tells readers that the health care reform bill will cost the state of California $500 million a year in higher Medicaid costs and Texas $370 million a year, it is giving readers no information whatsoever. The article could have instead told readers that the Medicaid expenses will add approximately 0.5 percent to the budgets of both California and Texas. This would have allowed readers to better assess the impact of the bill on state budgets. --Dean Baker

It seems that they haven't. When discussing the cause of foreclosures the Post told readers that the Obama administration's new housing plan takes aim at: "the major cause of the current wave of foreclosures: "the spike in unemployment. While the initial mortgage crisis that erupted three years ago resulted from millions of risky home loans that went bad, more-recent defaults reflect the country's economic downturn and the inability of jobless borrowers to keep paying." Actually, the major cause of both waves of foreclosure was the collapse of the housing bubble. The plunge in prices pushed many homeowners underwater in their mortgages. As much research has shown, being underwater is a key factor in foreclosure. Homeowners are unlikely to default on homes in which they have equity. --Dean Baker

A front page NYT story noted that Social Security benefit payments this year exceed its tax collections. As both the experts cited in the article pointed out, this fact makes absolutely no difference for the program since it holds more than $2.5 trillion in government bonds. In spite of the statements by the experts cited in the article, the second paragraph told readers that this event marked: "an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office." Nothing in the article or in the structure of the program suggests that there is any importance whatsoever to this threshold. --Dean Baker addendum: I quickly looked through the comments and will insist on imposing some arithmetic on this discussion. First, as a matter of logic, the Social Security surplus was spent in the same way that the money lent by anyone who buys a government bond is spent. This has absolutely nothing to do with the time of day -- people who own bonds...

That is the implication of its complaint that getting private financial companies out of the government insured student loan business will cause it to shed 2,500 jobs. Since the government is not hiring new employees to deal with the extra business, the implication is that these people were unnecessary paper pushers. This move by the government is freeing up resources to be used more efficiently elsewhere. --Dean Baker