Blog: Beat the Press

It would be great if people who reported on the budget deficit for major news outlets could be required to know the basic accounting identities that get taught in every introductory economics class. The key one that almost none of them seem to know is that the trade deficit (X-M) is equal to the sum […]

The Washington Post is a huge supporter of trade agreements like NAFTA that put non-college educated workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world, while largely protecting the most highly educated workers like doctors and lawyers. They push this selective protectionism by calling it “free trade.” They also call anyone who disagrees […]

Peter Peterson, the billionaire Wall Street investment banker, is devoting more than $1 billion to a campaign to whip up fears about budget deficits in order to force cuts in Social Security and Medicare. It almost looks as though the NYT has joined the effort. It printed an article today that uses a measure of […]

The Washington Post reports that Senator Gregg does not know why the government is spending money to create jobs. According to the Post, Mr. Gregg said of a jobs bill: “Why do we keep doing this? …. Why do we keep passing debt on to our children? Why do we keep running program after program […]

In a discussion of the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the Washington Post noted that the government had committed $125 billion to cover their losses. While the article reports that these losses have been a major political issue, it would have been useful to point out that the losses were, in effect, subsidies […]

The NYT reports that opponents of a measure that would save money by putting private lenders out of the government guaranteed student loan business warn that it could cost jobs. This is of course true. Suppose there is an efficient computer company that sells computers for $500 each and an inefficient computer company that sell […]

Anyone seriously interested in controlling health care costs would be actively discussing alternatives to patent protection for financing the development of prescription drugs and medical equipment. Everyone who has taken even an intro economics class knows that there will be horrible waste and corruption when goods can sell for hundreds of times their competitive market […]

The NYT reports that the Fed is debating whether much of current unemployment is due to a skills mismatch between workers and the available jobs as opposed to simply a cyclical shortfall in demand. It is worth noting that the assertion of skills mismatch is a predictable behavior of economists in policy positions in every […]

The NYT reported that China and India both signed an agreement to limit their greenhouse gas emissions. The article cites unnamed analysts who complained that the new commitment by China and India falls short of the terms of the agreement. The article neglected to mention that on a per person basis China emits about one […]

Yep, the good news according to the headline of the USA Today article is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that job openings in January were at their highest level since last February of 2009. That would be the month when the economy lost 726,000 jobs. The numbers are going in the right direction […]