The Economy Isn't Hopeless; It's The Press

IBD ^ | June 2, 2008 | Dan Gainor

[Kaslin]

One look at statistics — from GDP growth to the unemployment rate — and it's obvious this isn't the worst economic time in U.S. history. But it might be the worst journalistically.

The major media give us only two degrees of economic news — close to "apocalyptic" and worse. They are so outlandishly negative that coverage of the Bear Stearns buyout was vastly worse than reporting of the 1929 stock market crash.

As the stock market reeled from the Bear Stearns collapse back in March, ABC News asked: Is the "economy heading over a cliff?" Journalists made it seem so, calling the American financial system everything from "bleak" to in a "meltdown."

ABC, CBS and NBC made comparisons to America's worst economic turmoil — the Great Depression — more than 40 times in the first four months of 2008.

Compare that with how the New York Times summed up its own market outlook in an Oct. 30, 1929, story after billions of dollars were lost in record trading. "Despite the drastic decline, sentiment in Wall Street last night was more cheerful than it has been on any day since the torrent of selling got under way," wrote the paper.

Words like "optimism" and "hope" shouted off the pages of major newspapers. The Oct. 31, 1929, Times described the devastating six-day decline:

"The market quickly regained its poise and stability."

The same day, the Washington Post discussed "the passing of the crisis."

The difference between how the media handled a crisis in 1929 and 2008 was astounding. Network news was four times more negative about the Bear Stearns buyout than major newspapers were about the 1929 crash, which many historians link to the beginning of the Depression.

[Biblebelter]

You are so right. The dollar is becoming the major story of the American economy. The dollar’s recent strength turned sour today and oil went up five dollars a barrel. A weak dollar can have some postive effects for some in the short term, but in the long term if it continues to go down, that will be very very bad for the average American. Bernanke was supposedly the first Fed Chair to ever publicly talk up dollar as it has traditionally been an unofficial job of the Secretary of Treasury.