Dean Baker

The WSJ is shooting for a Pulitzer for journalistic incompetence. It ran a piece discussing the Obama administration’s efforts to boost the economy with increased exports and never once mentioned the value of the dollar. The value of the dollar is the main determinant of the price of U.S. exports in other countries. If the […]

The NYT told readers that: “currency is usually regarded as a barometer of a country’s economic conditions. The stronger the currency, the thinking goes, the stronger the economy, and visa versa.” Is that so? Do people view China’s economy as weak? Was the U.S. economy seen as weak in the years 1993-1995 as the recovery […]

Bloomberg has a nice piece documenting a number of instances in which drug companies have promoted their drugs for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration and it harmed or killed patients. The part missing from this discussion is any discussion of the perverse incentives that patent monopolies create for promoting off-label uses. […]

The Post endlessly pushes the line that the only way that the government affects the distribution of income is with its tax and spending policy. Of course, these are probably the least important influences. The Fed’s emergency loans and the TARP loans (which did not count as spending) ensured that the Goldman Sachs folks and […]

The Post misinformed readers this morning by telling them that the 10.2 percent unemployment rate reported for October was a: “was a reminder of how far off they were in their early predictions about the impact of the stimulus bill passed earlier this year.” Actually, the Obama administration, like CBO and most private forecasters, underestimated […]

It would have been wrong for the NYT to make this sort of assertion about the basis of Senator Lieberman’s opposition to a public pan, even though it make be accurate. However, it is equally wrong for it to assert, as it did, that Lieberman was opposed to plan with a state op-out because: “even […]

Why do reporters and analysts always fail to take note of the fact that there are fewer stores this year than last year? This is important when we compare same store sales, because the stores that have survived over the year now have a larger share of retail business. In a normal year there is […]

It probably has something to do with the fact the billionaire investment banker owns lots of government bonds on which he collects interest. (Okay, I don’t know this for sure, but I’m guessing that he does own bonds.) The interest that a billionaire like Peterson collects on government bonds would almost certainly exceed by a […]

Fannie Mae is losing money, therefore it owes no taxes. However, it does have tax credits on its books. Enter the geniuses at Goldman Sachs. They want to buy the tax breaks from Fannie so that they can put them to good use. The Post mentions this proposal in the context of a report on […]

The Post told readers this morning that critics of measures to limit global warming warn that legislation could be:”a job-killer in states dependent on manufacturing and natural resources.” While the risk of job loss associated with measures to limit global warming have been frequently mentioned in the Post and elsewhere in the media, the same […]