The 'Recession' Is a Media Myth

[Buffmaster]

The 'Recession' Is a Media Myth



During the 2000 election, with Bill Clinton as president, the economy was viewed through rose-colored glasses. According to polls, voters didn’t realize that the country was in a recession. Although the economy started shrinking in July 2000, most Americans through the entire year thought that the economy was fine.

But over the last half-year, the media and politicians have said we were in a recession even while the economy was still growing.

Gas prices are going up. The economy is slowing. Talk of recession is seemingly everywhere. While the majority of people rate their personal finances positively, consumer confidence in the economy has plunged to a 16-year low, well below what it was during the last year of the Clinton administration when we were in a recession.

A Nexis search on news stories during the three-month period from July 2000 through September 2000 using the keywords “economy recession US” produces 1,388. By contrast, the same search over just the last month finds 3,166. Or, even more telling, take the three months from July through September last year, when the GDP was growing at a phenomenal 4.9 percent. The same type of Google search shows 2,475 news stories.

Over 78 percent more negative news stories discussed a recession when the economy under a Republican was soaring than occurred under a Democrat when the economy was shrinking.

A little perspective on the economy would be helpful. The average unemployment rate during President Clinton was 5.2 percent. The average under President George W. Bush is just slightly below 5.2. The current unemployment rate is4.8 percent, almost half a percentage point lower than these averages.

The average inflation rate under Clinton was 2.6 percent, under Bush it is 2.7 percent. Indeed, one has to go back to the Kennedy administration to find a lower average rate. True the inflation rate over the last year has gone up to 4 percent, but that is still lower than the average inflation rate under all the presidents from Nixon through Bush’s father.

Gas prices are indeed up 33 percent over the last year, but to get an average of 4 percent means that lots of other prices must have stayed the same or gone down. On other fronts, seasonally adjusted civilian employment is 650,000 people greater than it was a year ago. Personal income grew at a strong half of one percent in just February.

Despite all that, this last week, Barack Obama proclaimed “As most experts know, our economy is in a recession.” Hillary Clinton made similar staements last fall. Yet, as any economist knows, a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth, and we haven’t even had one single quarter of negative growth reported. The economy slowed down significantly during the end of last year, but that was after a sizzling annual GDP growth rate of 4.9 percent in the third quarter.

Housing has obviously been a big drag on the economy, but many other sectors of the economy, such as exports, have been doing well, some extremely well. For example, aerospace exports increased by over 13 percent last year.

The media’s focus on the negative side of everything surely helps explain people’s pessimism. In a recent interview Fox’s Neil Cavuto claimed this bias “is all part of the media’s plan to get a Democrat in the White House.”

Indeed, research has indicated that media bias is real. Kevin Hassett and I looked at 12,620 newspaper and wire service headlines from 1985 through 2004 for stories on the release of official government releasing numbers on the unemployment rate, number of people employed, gross domestic product (GDP), retail sales, and durable goods.

Even after accounting for how well the economy was doing (e.g., what the unemployment rate was and whether it was going up or down), there was still a big difference in how positive or negative the headlines were. Democratic presidents got about 15 percent more positive headlines than Republicans for the same economic news.

Yet, the hysteria created by this coverage can have another cost. It creates pressure for government to “do something,” even if that rush to do something actually ends up hurting the economy. For example, Obama's promises last week “to amend our bankruptcy laws so families aren't forced to stick to the terms of a home loan” will only further drive down the value of mortgage-backed securities, making any unstable financial institutions that hold them even more likely to fail. In the long term, who is going to want to loan money when the contract can be rewritten at a later date?

The news media have generated a lot of fear. Ben Stein has a point when he says “The actual economic conditions are not that bad. I think if we have a recession, if we have a serious recession, a great deal will lie at the media’s feet.” Hopefully a little perspective will enter the picture before even more harm is done.

[ootpoot]

Ooooops! Buffmaster forget to credit this crap to the Fox "News" Opinion Page writer John Lott.

It is so astoundingly full of distortions, half truths and just outright lies that it would practically have to be debunked on a sentence by sentence basis.
It truly appears to have passed through some White House propaganda office where they must believe the intended audience for it, Fox News viewers, are just too stupid to notice what kind of absolute bullshit they're writing.

It was published on APRIL FIRST.

I'm waiting for Fox "News" to admit that it was presented as a joke solely to piss off any NON-rightwing whackjob who may have inadvertently viewed it.
Conservative moonbats just don't know jackshit about comedy, do they?



:sarcasm:

[Sir Jig-A-Lot]

the media and politicians have said we were in a recession even while the economy was still growing.

pfft! i always knew this to be the case. those olde wealthy white men in power will say anything that benefits them & their stranglehold on whatever makes their pockets fatten. of course they rarely do their dirty work publicly. that's why they have underlings & corporations. they need slaves to do the work & middle management to face the abuse & take the blame.

[ootpoot]

Even if it is a fake, it is a good example of the manipulation used by Fox propagandists.

They say:
"Gas prices are indeed up 33 percent over the last year, but to get an average of 4 percent [inflation rate] means that lots of other prices must have stayed the same or gone down."

Sounds convincing, doesn't it?

Except that the official inflation rate does NOT include food or FUEL.
These people are beyond liars -- they are fucking criminal liars.

:x

[Sir Jig-A-Lot]

see,that's what i'm talkin' about: Fox News a/k/a Rupert Murdoch's political media arm.
i cannot believe people out there actually take that shit as gospel & not satire.
i see it as a part of all the competing comedy channels out there in tv land.

These people are beyond liars -- they are fucking criminal liars.

they are the primary reason Cheney & his bumboy dubya stole the 2K election.

[raum]

Recession is not a myth. It is a necessity. It is a necessity that production needs to slow at times to allow inventory settlements, especially for FIFO retailers. Plainly put, the store needs to close or slow down so the milk guy can grab all the milk from the back and and put it in front. "Late Bake" at your grocer is recession. Not chopping firewood in summer is a recession. This is the problem of a dependent work force. A economy where every can do part of something, but all of nothing. A woodcutter could do landscaping in the winter... but if all he can do is chop wood, he has to constantly find new reasons to make people buy wood, and make sure he earns his keep year round. This is the creation of a "work force". It was for security this happened, after people got a eye- opener in the form of a depression.

The notion of recession is flawed from the start for one reason: It creates a perception we all have some common assets. WE DON'T. It takes no consideration for global assets, intangibles, and anything but lower of cost-or-market of appreciable assets. Recession implies communism. Our market has become far too sophisticated for concern of a recession. Recession analysis is like all prediction analysis - over 70% wrong.

Why did I group it with prediction analysis when it occurs in "market real time"? simple,.. because Recession is a term for 2 consecutive quarters of loss for an economic entity. You know how often they actually conduct a economic census of the country? EVERY FIVE YEARS. which means most of the work in economic analysis is WEATHERWATCHING.

The problem is the market has a value, and it is not always the cost value. A company can also transit inventory at critical times, so they can work their asset value down to impact taxes if sales are low, make end of period adjustment and even produce for charity or some other non-profit.

BUT this also impacts financial reporting, which in turn puts a spin on percieved loss and gains in production and sales.

---------
Regarding the whiney florida crap:


How did they steal the election? Florida's poular vote doesn't influence their electoral votes.

It is a moot point. Even if the popular vote was off, when it came to it, the same privelidged class matters, and the rest of us do not.

And who cares.... every last damn one of them is related and THEY all have common assets.
---------- (even Obama)

but NONE of this has to do with conservatism. I am a conservative federalist, by the way. and I tell you my sense of humour and fun is not to be trifled with. I am not a friggin neo-con, a republi-con, fox new spectator, or a rush limbaugh speak-n-spell.

I am beer and revolution, burn the tax form and bury the senator kind of conservative.

Here are the tenets of conservatism:

1. Don't overstate your assets, even at the expense of understating them to prevent squandering them. This allows for times of shortage.

2. Man's inherit nature, and the tenets of freedom are such that man's choices must be as uninfringed by government or popular opinion, as feasibly so.

3. Let the expense validate itself by worth of result, not the spirit of interventionism nor obligation.

THESE ARE THE TENETS OF GOOD REASONABLE GOVERNMENT, and people be condemned by their decision to forsake these in hopes of false security, imagined obligations to offer mercy to enemies, foreign intervention, wasteful innovation, or trappings that involve breeding people of weakness.

I look more forward to the zombie apocalypse than the next administration....

[Buffmaster]

These people are beyond liars -- they are fucking criminal liars.

That's right, the DEMS wrote the book on telling the truth and don't watch Foxnews because they never tell the truth like CNN does.

Thanks for the lesson asshole!

Go fuck yourself, your nothing more than a East coast commie/Socialist pig claimimg that Obama will lead our country to the promise land.

[Sir Jig-A-Lot]

who told you that the Corporate News Nightmare tells the truth,Buff? no major news network coming outta Seppoland is w/out an agenda. it's sad to say , but most "news" programs hire their "talent" now based on political aethetics,ie, How Trustworthy They Look & Sound &/or as Eye Candy as compared to say 15-20 years ago when most motherfuckers were still hired based on their journalism skills.

[ootpoot]

ootpoot sez: These people are beyond liars -- they are fucking criminal liars.
Go fuck yourself, your nothing more than a East coast commie/Socialist pig claimimg that Obama will lead our country to the promise land.

I thought it was quite clear that I am a Canadian Commie Socialist Pinko IslamoFascist WelfareBum FaggotyHomo Liberal Progressive.
Did I leave anything out? :sarcasm:

In response, I give you a point of view from a hundred million of your countrymen:

Fuck the South.
"Fuck 'em. We should have let them go when they wanted to leave.
But no, we had to kill half a million people so they'd stay part of our special Union.
Fighting for the right to keep slaves - yeah, those are states we want to keep.

And now what do we get?
We're the fucking Arrogant Northeast Liberal Elite?
How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America?
The Authentic America.
Really?

Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes.
Those Founding Fathers you keep going on and on about?
All that bullshit about what you think they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn't bother to read the first half of the fucking sentence?

Who do you think those wig-wearing lacy-shirt sporting revolutionaries were?
They were fucking blue-staters, dickhead.
Boston?
Philadelphia?
New York?
Hello?
Think there might be a reason all the fucking monuments are up here in our backyard?

No, No.
Get the fuck out.
We're not letting you visit the Liberty Bell and fucking Plymouth Rock anymore until you get over your real American selves and start respecting those other nine amendments.
Who do you think those fucking stripes on the flag are for?
Nine are for fucking blue states.

Get it?
We started this shit, so don't get all uppity about how real you are you Johnny-come-lately "Oooooh I've been a state for almost a hundred years" dickheads.
Fuck off."

There's more here: http://www.fuckthesouth.com

:laff:

[raum]

You better come a little more educated before you come here against the Confederacy.

and your little litany about the south is not only stupid, but ignorant.
you seem ignorant in general, oot.

The American Civil war was not about slavery. It was about State's Rights. Virginia was a state before New York. So was West Virginia. For many in the deep south, it was about the fact that the USA bought the Louisiana Purchase without the consent of its Colonists. An independence initiative had been growing in Lousiana for decades before the Lousiana Purchase. Provision for independence was sought, and DENIED by the US. The US instead bought the Lousiana Purchase and ruined the south by making it a HUGE source of revenue, to the detriment of its people. Many people who fought and died for the south had no slaves. Many people in the south were fighting against the same notion of Human Oppression as the fuel of slavery.

http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_h ... st_ij.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_New_Orleans

http://www.getafrigginclue.com
Most people who oppose the ideas of the south know little about them.
Most people who oppose slavery know little of its history.