The Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, is hard at work putting a brave face on a shaky economy.
Just one example: On Thursday, after February consumer spending fell sharply for the third straight month, the wire service's Christopher Rugaber reported that "Freezing temperatures and snowstorms likely weighed on sales in February," and that "steep drops in gas prices dragged down sales" in December and January. While that was largely accurate, Rugaber then looked ahead, citing consumer confidence, at that point at "its highest levels since the recession," as a reason not to be concerned about the economy's long-term health. But today, when the University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index "unexpectedly" fell by over four points from 95.4 to 91.2, defying expectations that it would barely increase, a search on "University Michigan" (not in quotes) at its national site indicates that the AP didn't report it.
As Bloomberg News's transcript of the related conference call indicates, the U of M spokesperson had the predictable tired excuses ready for those who wished to use them. The call also exposed the continuing deep fissure between the fortunes of the economy's top and bottom economic rungs:
DR. RICHARD CURTIN: Thank you. As many of you already know, the index of consumer sentiment fell slightly in early March from the February reading, but it still remains well above last March. Most -- in fact, all of the decline in early March came among households with incomes in the lower and mid third of the income distribution and their decline was quite sharp in absolute terms. It was twice the change among higher-income folks -- that is households in the top third of the income distribution.
And lower income households really felt the weather quite -- quite a bit.
You see, low-income folks got snow, ice and cold, but those in the upper third managed to stay high, dry and warm.
Continuing:
... when we asked specifically about the unemployment rate, they expect it to continue to decline, but at a slower pace than we have seen in the past -- the past year. But the critical fact is that they don’t expect much in wage gains. In early March, they expected a 1.2% change in income across all households, and that’s a bit better than February’s 1%, but not as good as the 1.9% people expected in January of this year. And so that initial increase in expectations for income has largely been quieted.
"Quieted"? How about "squashed" to about 60 percent of what they were just two months ago?
At the end of his remarks, Curtin again went to the weather:
... I expect the housing market to improve, but the improvement to be rather modest.
So overall, I think this is a good reading. It is heavily dependent on the weather and gasoline price changes, and that I think will clear in the coming months, not perhaps immediately because of the lag on how you get billed for energy and home heating and so forth, but I think this is a very good reading after a tough winter.
In reality, as Zero Hedge noted, it was the biggest miss compared to expectations since 2006. So excuse me for not buying Curtin's expectations for future months.
In another example showing how the Associated Press tries to keep the relatively positive news flowing as long as it can, Rugaber's Thursday report claimed that "forecast (GDP) growth will be just (an annualized) 2 percent or less in the first quarter." It turns out that Rugaber's "or less" really means "or a lot less":
Even the seemingly eternally overoptimistic folks at Moody's are currently predicting 1.6 percent.
And there's still plenty of time left for "unexpectedly" bad readings and "disappointing" results.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
