Business Coverage

Today's Advance Monthly Retails Sales Report for November from the Census Bureau came in with a seasonally and shopping-day adjusted 0.2% increase over October. Analysts expected 0.6%, and a whole host of them described the result as "disappointing," as shown here in a Google News Search for the past 24 hours on ["retail sales" disappoint"] (typed exactly as indicated between brackets; as of 6:…

Each year the Business & Media Institute looks back on the year's news and selects the top 10 worst economic myths. This year the media's myths were wide-ranging: from conspiracy theories about economic sabotage, to overpopulation panic and Occupy Wall Street's mantra "We are the 99 percent." Here is our 2011 list:

A false Huffington Post claim that Fox Business Network’s Eric Bolling called the Muppets “communist” quickly spread to other news and entertainment outlets on Dec. 5. A segment on the latest Muppet villain, oil tycoon Tex Richman, was quickly twisted by the left into an attack on Fox and showed where news organizations and comedy shows get their information.  In the movie, the Muppets are…

For conservatives, one of the bright spots of the Occupy Wall Street protests was when millionaire investor Peter Schiff went down to Zuccotti Park with video camera and a sign reading "I Am The 1% - Let's Talk." On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of speaking with Schiff by telephone in a sweeping interview about his experience at OWS, how the financial media are doing, and ending with his rather…

Updated : More analysis and full transcript added. Introducing an interview with CEO Richard Branson about his new book, "Screw Business As Usual," on Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer proclaimed: "...Sir Richard Branson argues the driving force behind capitalism should not be about making a profit, it's about caring for people, communities, and the planet." [Audio available here]…

Muppet fans around the world were excited to see their childhood friends reunite; only to find out it was to save their studio from a rich oil executive. Liberal Hollywood loves an evil oil company - better yet, make it a successful business man that runs an oil company. The movie industry has repeatedly bashed businessmen and gone after gas and oil. Tex Richman, a wealthy man that plans to…

This morning, the Census Bureau told us that 25,000 new homes were sold in October, which, after seasonal adjustment, works out to an annual rate of 307,000. This was up from a seasonally adjusted and downwardly revised (from 313,000) 303,000 in September. According to the first sentence of Derek Kravitz's related report at the Associated Press, this constitutes a "hopeful sign," even though…

The media are treating Thanksgiving like Halloween by whipping up one of their favorite bogeymen. ABC and NBC are now targeting canned food as potentially harmful to humans, because it contains a chemical that the media has long crusaded against: BPA, otherwise known as bisphenol-A, found in many plastics and packaging products. A study by the Harvard School of Public Health found that levels…

Assuming he even tried, Brian Williams could not suppress his smirk Tuesday night as he took a shot at a guest who had appeared earlier that day on CNBC. Businessman and Mitt Romney support Ken Langone said that President Obama's anti-business rhetoric and lack of leadership was preventing a true economic recovery from taking hold, exclaiming at one point that "businessmen and fat cats need to…

In their deeply deceptive Friday morning story ("Deep spending cuts pose a new threat to US economy") about how the bicameral bipartisan supercommittee is supposedly going to hurt the economy with whatever results from its handiwork, Christopher Rugaber and Daniel Wagner of the Associated Press, aka The Administration's Press, "somehow" forgot to include one "little" detail, and deferred…

You would think that a story headlined "GOP says Energy Dept. tried to delay solar layoffs" would have a quote or two from a Republican Party spokesperson, politician, candidate or even a rank-and-file party member alleging that, well, the Energy Department tried to delay layoffs at now-bankrupt Solyndra. It doesn't. The "trifling" matter clearly didn't concern the headline writer at the…

On Saturday, at a Q&A session at the APEC CEO Business Summit in Hawaii, President Barack Obama, when asked about impediments to foreign investment in the United States, responded in part: "... we’ve been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted -- well, people will want to come here and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and…

Kerem Ozkan at Advertising Age is not happy with Matt Drudge for having the nerve to call a USDA-administered fee imposed on growers of Christmas trees a "Christmas Tree Tax" (link is Drudge Archive item containing the referenced headline). Actually (Ozkan recognizes this), Drudge didn't start it. David Addington at Heritage did. Here are excerpts from Ozkan's not-so-fine whine, during which…

Flashbacks of 2008 were on the minds of many when MF Global, a Wall Street firm led the Democratic former N.J. Gov. Jon Corzine, filed for bankruptcy amid a huge scandal. Forbes said the firm owes $2.2 billion to JP Morgan and Deutsche Banks. But the broadcast networks had amnesia when it came to their previous coverage of Corzine, his role as adviser and fundraiser for Obama and their previous…