Business Coverage

Somebody arrest the CEO of Bank of America. The knave is forcing poor Amy Robach to use his bank's ATM machines. At least, so it would seem from Amy's statement on this morning's "Today."The NBC show ran a segment this morning about the fact that BoA has raised its ATM fees for non-customers to $3. When things were kicked back to co-anchor Robach in the studio, she unloaded.View video here.

"Some new economic reports are raising fears that we are headed for a recession," MSNBC's Alex Witt warned at 1:10 p.m. Eastern on Friday's "MSNBC Live" program. (h/t NB contributor Lynn Davidson)The monitor behind Witt displayed a more pessimistic picture reading "U.S ECONOMY COLLAPSE?"Video (0:29): Real (796 kB) and Windows (905 kB), plus MP3 audio  (221 kB).A recession is classically defined…

Much like tasty snacks, the networks can never stop their addiction to “food police” groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest.Yesterday morning it was Good Morning America that was shilling for them, saying, “Did you realize you were paying more for less food?” What was the target this time? The 100 calorie “snack packs,” that CSPI themselves have fought for. CSPI is upset about…

What happens a guy with verifiable liberal credentials (contributing editor at Rolling Stone and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic and Air America) just happens to have written a book highly critical of the coal industry – “Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future”? You put him on television or the front page of your opinion section and you parade…

The powerful "manufacturing is in decline" meme won't go away soon, but it should. It apparently isn't enough that the Institute for Supply Management's Manufacturing Index has read "expansion" in 48 of the past 50 months. It has become an article of faith among reporters and opportunistic politicians that American manufacturing has been, and continues to be, in a long-term decline. The fact is…

Matt Damon dressed as gas pump? Ben Affleck as an ear of corn? No, it’s not “Good Will Hunting,” the sequel. It’s a new set of videos promoting ethanol mandates on the Web site cleanmyride.org. The Clean My Ride site is run by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, an arm of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress. The purpose of Clean My Ride is to urge Congress to mandate…

As the stock market went up and down over the past few weeks, media coverage also bounced from end-of-the-world rhetoric to rational analysis.CNBC’s Jim Cramer went on an impassioned rant August 6 calling for the Fed to reduce interest rates.“Bernanke needs to open the discount window. That is how bad things are out there … in the fixed income markets we have Armageddon,” said Cramer on “Stop…

At OpinionJournal.com on Thursday ("Fair but Unbalanced -- How the media promote false pessimism about the economy"), Brian Wesbury, who has written several times on the disconnect between the strong economy and the public's perception of it (previous references here, here, here, here, and here), had another generally stellar column about what is nonetheless a relatively small piece of the…