Dean Baker

Alan Blinder did a pitch for a business tax credit for hiring new workers in the Post today. He briefly mentions some of the routes for gaming the credit, but misses the most obvious one for the credit as he has proposed it — increasing hours. If firms can get a tax credit for higher […]

The Post reported on the administration’s mortgage modification program. At one point it presents an estimate Credit Suisse on the number of foreclosures that would need to be prevented this year to stabilize house prices. (The article put Credit Suisse’s estimate at 3.2 million. This is obviously wrong since that is close to twice the […]

The Washington Post reported on a new study from the Pew Center on the States which purportedly criticized state governments for making overly optimistic assumptions on stock returns in their pension fund investments: “On average, states predict they will see an 8 percent return every year from their investments in the markets. Meanwhile, the S&P […]

The NYT told readers about a deal between the Senate and the Obama administration to establish a council of regulators that would have the responsibility of identifying systemic risk. It then adds that the council: “addresses one of the primary lessons of the near debacle: that no one had been assigned to ensure the stability […]

The NYT reported concerns expressed by regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents that large deficits could eventually lead to reduced Fed independence and higher inflation rates. It would have been worth pointing out that the deficits are very large at present only due to the fact that the economy is in a severe downturn? This downturn […]

The NYT ran a front page article today claiming a “broad agreement broad agreement among critics about Exhibit A: The unwillingness of the two parties to compromise to control a national debt that is rising to dangerous heights.” The article presents no evidence to suggest a broad agreement of any sort among critics, nor does […]

USA Today told readers that Japan is hanging on for now as the world’s second largest economy, ahead of China. This is just silly. While Japan does still rank second when its GDP is measured using a currency conversion standard (converting its currency into dollars at the current exchange rate), its economy is only half […]

We are looking at a prolonged period of high unemployment because economists with degrees from places like Harvard and M.I.T. could not see an $8 trillion housing bubble. The economics reporters who work for outlets like the New York Times, National Public Radio, and the Wall Street Journal all lacked the ability to think independently […]

The Chicago Tribune may have laid off many of their reporters but it still has a Social Security fearmonger position. Greg Burns told readers that: “As of this year, Social Security will be running in the red for the first time in a quarter-century.” Wow, that’s really really scary. Except Social Security was always supposed […]

AP broke with standard news practices by circulating what can only be considered an opinion piece on the deficit as a news story. The article exclusively presents the views of deficit hawks and misrepresents many fundamental issues about the budget. After noting the Greek budget crisis, the second sentence tells readers: “In the world’s largest […]