Blog: Beat the Press

In the middle of an article telling readers about Alan Greenspan’s (yes, the guy who couldn’t see an $8 trillion housing bubble) assessment of the economy, the NYT refers to the “paradox” that the Labor Department reported that the economy created 162,000 jobs in March but the unemployment rate remained fixed at 9.7 percent. This […]

Thomas Friedman has refrained from discussing economics in his columns for some time and the world was happy. But, now he’s back with a vengeance. He begins his column with today’s “fun fact”: “Between 1980 and 2005, virtually all net new jobs created in the U.S. were created by firms that were 5 years old […]

This is the question that everyone should be asking, not just of Greenspan, but of every economist in the country. The NYT has nice column by Michael Burry on the topic. –Dean Baker

When people talk about plans to “help” homeowners they must (yes, I said “must”) ask two simple questions: 1) Are the homeowners being “helped” paying less in mortgage and other housing costs than they would to rent a comparable unit: and 2) Are the homeowners likely to end up with equity in their homes? Neither […]

To those who pay attention to the economy, it’s rather evident that the basic economic problems of the last two decades are the bubble driven growth of this era and the country’s broken health care system. But NYT columnist David Brooks apparently never allows the actual state of the economy to affect his pronouncements about […]

I leave the assessment of this USA Today headline to readers’ judgment. –Dean Baker

That is what the headline of an article on new economic data told readers. The headline is: “Unemployment and Inflation Rise in Europe.” The data showed that unemployment increased from 9.9 percent in January to 10.0 percent in February. This increase is not statistically significant. It is also the same unemployment rate that had originally […]

The Post reported on President Obama’s lifting of the moratorium on offshore drilling and the response to the decision. While the article noted the reactions of politicians and presented polling data, it neglected to mention the fact that the oil that can potentially be obtained from these areas will have no noticeable impact on oil […]

The Washington Post repeated a common complaint that the reason that the economy is not creating jobs is because employers are squeezing more productivity out of workers and therefore need fewer workers to produce the same level of output. Productivity growth cannot explain the failure for the economy to generate jobs thus far in this […]