Blog: Beat the Press

The NYT reports on a new plan from the Obama administration to help homeowners. According to the article, under the plan the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) will guarantee new loans in exchange for banks writing down some of the principle on underwater mortgages. It would have been worth pointing out that the FHA is currently […]

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 […]

That seems to be the argument of a Washington Post article that reports that firms are finding ways to increase output without hiring more workers. Of course firms are always finding ways to increase output without hiring more workers, this is called “productivity growth.” Rather than being a problem, productivity growth is a good thing. […]

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 […]

That should have been the lead to an NPR piece following up a Morning Edition interview with New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg. Senator Gregg, who is often held up as a thoughtful fiscal conservative, concluded his interview by asserting that the health care bill approved by Congress would increase the size of government from 20 […]

Serious newspapers don’t pull down ghosts from the sky to present their views to readers. However, in an article discussing the implications of the health care plan, the NYT told readers:”many have come to believe that the system [Social Security] must change or go broke, the battle Mr. Bush fought and lost in 2005.” Of […]

That is what can be concluded from its decision to call the Treasury bonds held by the Social Security trust fund “IOUs.” This is not the normal term applied to government bonds in the New York Times or anywhere else. This is a pejorative term that has the effect of undermining the credibility of the […]

While rightly blaming Greenspan for the economic downturn, Robert Samuelson gets a few things wrong in his Post column. First, he attributes the revitalization of the U.S. economy to the end of the double-digit inflation of the 70s. Actually, most of the drop in inflation had been completed by the early 80s. However, there was […]

An AP story in the Washington Post on the IMF’s warnings about debt levels told readers that: “Japan’s debt is proportionately even bigger — about twice its GDP — but the impact is cushioned because most is held by Japanese households.” Actually the fact that the debt is mostly held by Japanese households by itself […]

A Morning Edition piece on the shortfall in Pennsylvania’s public employee pension funds told listeners that just 10 years the funds were over-funded, then the good times went away. Actually, 10 years ago the stock market was in the middle of a huge bubble. This temporarily inflated the assets of pension funds, including the public […]