Posted on 06/02/2008 6:22:30 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
I hardly need to point it out on FR, but here it is anyway: the economy is regarded as a safe issue for Democrats and Iraq no longer is. There are numerous apocalyptic stories about the former and the latter is being ignored. Anyone who thinks this is coincidence simply isn’t paying attention.
Either my head is totally in the sand (or somewhere else, LOL!) or this “depression” truly is media-driven.
Husband and I have never been more comfortable in our jobs and benefits packages. We’ve yet to miss a meal, or have to worry about how we’ll pay the bills. Granted, we have some debt from starting another business two years ago, but that’s lessening on a monthly basis, as it should.
As Rush says, people aren’t worried about themselves; they’re worried about their friends and neighbors because the media makes it seem like “everyone else” is in dire straits, while people in Real Life are not.
I never believed that bad economy crap. People are still spending money and there are plenty of jobs. The Press is just a bunch of liberals doing what they always do to prep the people to rush into the arms of a liberal politician for salvation. The sad thing is that they still have far to great a role in shaping general public opinion.
We don’t know what it means to suffer a true economic down turn and it doesn’t matter how many incidental low income Americans they find to interview the economy is strong and those who wish to work and learn new things will prosper as they always do.
The US has quite a history of outlandish journalism...but I believe this may be correct. The media is so astoundingly bad it leaves one at a loss for words to describe it.
It is certainly true that the economy is in much worse shape now than it has been for the last 6 years. There are sectors of the economy that are doing well, but housing, food, and energy are big negatives.
The Democrats are not wrong to make an issue out of this; the problem is that they don’t actually understand economics, and most Republicans don’t either, so most of what we hear is nonsense. This issue is potentially a winner for Republicans if they had someone capable of articulating basic economic principles and explaining how things have gone wrong. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to have any such person.
Three of the biggest problems are:
1) The single overwhelming determinant of the price of oil (and, indirectly, of the price of other forms of energy). more important than all the other factors combined, is what the Saudi oil minister wants to do. This is an unacceptable situation brought on by a stupid Republican administration who thinks the Saudis are our friends, and a stupid bipartisan majority of Congress which thinks (or, rather, feels) that oil and uranium are evil substances and therefore it is wrong to drill for more oil or build nuclear power plants.
2) The stupid farm bill and ethanol subsidies have caused the price of food to soar not only in the U.S. but worldwide — we wouldn’t even need to subsidize ethanol except for the sugar subsidy which prevents us from buying Brazilian ethanol much cheaper.
3) The stupid bankers who relaxed credit standards to loan to stupid borrowers who didn’t understand interest rate risk, and the stupid investment bankers who packaged this bad debt into sausages they sold as prime grade meat to stupid investors who didn’t notice that the mathematical models promising low risk assumed that credit standards had not changed when they obviously had, have caused the housing slump which is having secondary effects all over the financial world.
There are other problems related to immigration and health care regulations which have also hurt the economy, but the 3 listed above are caused by identifiable mistakes and have identifiable remedies, if we just had a politician who could communicate!
It really is time in this day and age of the internet to engage in an honest framing of the presidential debate impending for 08:
The Media daily leads us in the choices they prefer for us to make— including the choice of President.
As Hillary Clinton has discovered, our Media Elite have already selected a President for us. If we refuse, we will be branded racists.
In an effort to help us understand the need to make this choice, the Media incites economic malaise.
The Media tried to prop up Terrorists in Iraq and undermine our soldiers. That Media mission has failed.
We must now believe that the economy is headed toward a depression. Its a dangerous strategy given how closely any semblance of decline is tied to the democratic takeover of Congress.
I have figured out how to tell when the economy is actually tanking (not just when the media says it is)-
Here it is-
Are you listening? ;>
We will know that the economy has tanked when the nail salons start closing! There are tons of them, selling a totally unnecessary luxury item- when budgets get tight, manicures will be one of the first things to go.
And they scream that the sky is falling and we are all going to starve.
Great Article! Thanks for posting it.
Years ago, my grandmother would tell me stories of the ‘Great Depression’. It shaped her whole life afterwards. My family managed to survive though. They held on to the family home,farm and even saved money during the era by being ‘self reliant’!
Granny used to send my dad down the street every morning with his radio flyer to sell eggs from a few hens she raised in the backyard of the old family home. They cut corners,grew their own food, made their own clothes and managed to help the ‘hobos’ and suffering families by giving food away on their back porch every week.
‘Rugged Individualism’ and ‘Self- Reliance’ wins everytime.
If this country ever suffers a next ‘Great Depression’....conservatives will get through it and liberals will not.
economy my achin azz... i drove around the lake last weekend and i saw nothing but new roofs, new porches, new garages, new barns, new additions, NEW HOUSES and new Wineries on both side of the road. and i live in WNY, a place everybody says has been left behind.
“Americans’ net worth is $57 trillion. The total economy is $14 trillion a year. “
And what is the national debt?
And how much less is the dollar worth vs 5 years ago?
And if most of that net worth is real estate, has it also dropped 15% in the past year?
America today is the richest society in world history, and it is getting richer by the second, in world-historical amounts. $12 trillion a year of personal income, every year like clockwork and rising, goes a long, long way.
Tonight the CBS news (yeah, I know, but I was channel surfing) had the requisite food pantry at a church story with the spokesperson saying that the people handing out the food know how easily it could be them asking for help.
Hmmm. With the prices of everything going up, gas costing a small fortune, I don't feel like I'm getting wealthier. Most everyone I talk to here and out of state, is basically living from pay check to pay check, with stagnant wages, and most don't seem to be in a real peachy mood.
I had no idea everything was so rosy.
Given the dollar's relative value on the world market over the last couple of years, perhaps it's best to measure wealth by some other means. Three years ago, $1.50 got me a gallon of gas. Over Memorial weekend, $3.95 got me a gallon of gas. The gas hasn't changed, but the dollar sure has.
It is all rot and one-entry accounting. Yes of course if you pick the latest price move up alone, it is bigger in percentage terms than you whole income's movement. But by the definition of "biggest", everything else moved less, and some the other way. The income side is bigger than any of the single entries because.
It is all rot and one entry accounting, pretending every upward anything is birthright and every contrary smidgen is disaster. $57 trillion net worth and $14.2 trillion a year income will never make "poor", in the corporeal world. Only ideologist spin can keep up the pretence. The reality is a bacchanal of world-historical proportions - with occasional (quite temporary) hangovers to match.
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