Posted on 02/02/2004 4:29:09 PM PST by FlyLow
Four percent GDP growth would normally be considered very good, but on Friday night CBS managed to make it sound pretty weak. Over an on screen graphic which proclaimed “Slow Growing,” Dan Rather teased the January 30 CBS Evening News by asking: “New figures indicate the U.S. economy is still growing, but how about creating some jobs?”
Rather set up the subsequent story: “New numbers are about the U.S. economy and they’re mixed. They show the economy was growing in the fourth quarter of last year at a respectable annual rate of four percent. But that was down, less than half the rate of the third quarter and less than Wall Street was expecting, so stock prices fell today. The Dow lost 22 points. And even as the economy grows, CBS’s Anthony Mason reports, it is not growing any high number of new jobs.”
Mason showcased a Domino Sugar plant in Brooklyn which is shutting down, with 200 laid off. Mason delivered a snide play on words: “GDP may have jumped four percent in the fourth quarter, but the job market still isn’t jumping. To Domino Sugar’s laid off workers this recovery seems anything but sweet.”
Mason proceeded to run through layoffs at KB Toys, Kraft, Kodak and Ford before allowing a John Hancock economist to predict that the continued growth will require new jobs.
Right. By equally insightful logic, an overnight drop of 22 degrees temperature would signal the onset of the Ice Age.
Spending of those tax returns will mean more job growth. Manufacturing increases outstripped decreases reported by American companies four fold.
By summer time, the economy will be rolling and Dan Rather and friends will be stuttering and sputtering.
And there you have it.
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