Dean Baker

Fannie Mae and its sister institution Freddie Mac buy mortgages from banks. That is what they do. This means that when Fannie and Freddie lose money, they paid banks too much money for the mortgages. This point should be so simple that even an economist could understand it. This is why it is disturbing when […]

It seems that being surprised by the economy is a requirement for an economist to be a source for the Washington Post. The first sentence of a Post article on January existing home sales and GDP revisions told readers that: “Sales of previously owned houses unexpectedly slumped in January.” The main surprised economist featured in […]

It is not the job of reporters to just report what partisans to debates say about events. The vast majority of readers do not have the time and background to assess competing claims. When one party says something that is not true, the news is that this person is lying, not their lie. Therefore when […]

NPR gave us classic financial markets as sports event reporting this morning, pointing out how the markets moved on the words spoken by Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke. The correct response to these moment by moment movements should be: “who gives a damn?” There are a small number of rich speculators who stand to […]

The number of unemployment claims filed last week jumped by 22,000 from the prior week. USA Today told readers that analysts expected that claims would fall by 19,000. It is hard to understand why anyone who analyzes economic data for a living would have expected unemployment claims to fall from the prior week. In that […]

The headline of a Washington Post article told readers: “Economists surprised as new-home sales fall to lowest level in nearly 50 years.” The first sentence explained: “sales of newly built homes unexpectedly plummeted in January to their lowest level in nearly five decades, providing more evidence of the housing market’s fragility.” Actually, economists who understand […]

The WSJ told readers that Democratic senators claimed that the employment tax credit in a job bill passed by the Senate would create 1.3 million jobs. It then added: “but some independent economists said they expected it would have less impact than that.” It would be surprising if any independent economists believed the tax credit […]

The NYT had another blogpost complaining that the government pays more money to rich investment bankers like Peter Peterson than it does to poor children. Actually, the column didn’t mention how much money rich investment bankers get from the government in the form of interest payments on the government bonds that most of them hold, […]

Some folks at the NYT seem to think so. The paper published a blogpost telling readers: “Mr. Obama has directed the commission to recommend by Dec. 1 how to balance the budget by the fiscal year 2015, not counting interest payments on the debt, as well as to propose long-term changes in revenues and entitlement […]

The Obama administration has proposed a new program that would give $30 billion to banks at below market interest rates. The Post briefly discusses the merits of this program, noting that many businesses are not borrowing because they don’t have demand for their product, however the article does not include the views of anyone who […]