Business Coverage

Key data about the U.S. economy's performance released this past week was mostly dismal. Wednesday brought news that seasonally adjusted March retail sales, instead of climbing as predicted, fell by 0.3 percent. Later that morning, the government reported that manufacturing and trade inventories and sales both fell in February. The worst news came on Friday, when the Federal Reserve reported…

For better or worse, the press, Wall Street and others routinely place a great deal of faith in the federal government's payroll employment estimates. But when Republican Governor Rick Scott's supporters cited data from Uncle Sam's Bureau of Labor Statistics to defend him against an insufferably rude leftist who started screaming and cursing at him in a Starbucks coffee shop, Associated Press…

Just three months after Arch, the nation's Number 2 coal mining company, filed for bankruptcy, Number 1, Peabody Energy, has followed suit. Five of the industry's largest firms have now gone bankrupt in the past 12 months. Two Associated Press stories on Peabody this week managed to avoid mentioning the name of President Barack Obama, whose hostility toward the industry has been obvious since…

Today's report from the government on retail sales was awful — "unexpectedly" so, according to both Bloomberg and Reuters. Following on the heels of a 0.4 percent seasonally adjusted decline in January and a flat February, March sales fell by 0.3 percent. Two of the three main U.S. business wire services blamed the American people, not the worst post-recession economy since World War II during…

Despite the decay of the left-dominated blue-city model during the past several decades, liberals and the press are not fans of many urban neighborhood improvement efforts. One recent example found at a national media outlet is at Newsweek, where on April 2, Alexander Nazaryan, in an item headlined "WHITE CITY: THE NEW URBAN BLIGHT IS RICH PEOPLE," wrote that "gentrification ... turns cities…

On Tuesday, shortly after Governor Jerry Brown signed California's $15-an-hour minimum wage legislation, the Associated Press's Michael R. Blood and Don Thompson called the move "a victory for those struggling on the margins of the economy and the politically powerful unions that pushed it." As seen in a NewsBusters post on March 31, it's definitely a win for union members whose wages are set…

Perhaps this is why the press has been reluctant to cite economists who are predicting that sharp increases in state minimum wages like the $15-per-hour minimums just passed in California and New York will reduce employment: They're with many of their lefty brethren who don't care whether jobs are lost. So they must believe that no one else should care either. At the Washington Post's WonkBlog…

The Associated Press, the nation's de facto business news gatekeeper for those who don't follow the economy or the markets closely, is telling America that the U.S. job market is fine, and ignoring the dismal results seen in weekly pay during the past several months. Christopher Rugaber's Friday evening coverage of the government's jobs report earlier in the day described the reported 215,000 in…

The Associated Press sent its cameramen and reporters out to get the reaction of small business owners to California's just-passed six-year plan to raise the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour. Anyone expecting the AP to find representative responses clearly doesn't understand how the far-left propaganda machine disguised as an objective news service operates. All three business owners…

In covering Thursday morning's report from the Department of Labor on initial unemployment claims, one of a relatively few economic reports showing strength these days, Associated Press reporter Scott Boak spread his enthusiasm over the result to the entire economy. It wasn't justified. It's as if the poor guy has missed most of the pertinent other economic news during the past week, most of…

A Los Angeles Times story by Liam Dillon and Patrick McGreevy hailed the "historic" increase in the state-mandated minimum wage to $15 an hour. Apparently giddy with excitement, the pair also unwisely told readers that many public-sector employees who earn far more will be receiving big raises as a result of the legislation with having to bother negotiating with the government entities involved…

Anytime a major national Spanish-language television network promotes the vitality of America’s core private sector it warms our heart. So when we heard José Díaz-Balart, anchorman of Noticiero Telemundo, tout the role small businesses play in generating job opportunities, well, we wanted to be the first to say “Bravo”!

Nobody could have seen this coming. That's sarcasm, folks. Everyone but those who somehow thought that hope would somehow triumph over experience in the kinds of patients who would utilize Obamacare saw this coming. CNN Money Senior Writer Tami Luhby is reporting, with some apparent surprise, that "Obamacare patients are sicker and pricier than expected" (bolds are mine; HT Twitchy):

Mark Zandi, Moody's chief economist, comments monthly on the ADP private-sector employment report his firm compiles. He is "often quoted in national and global publications and interviewed by major news media outlets, and is a frequent guest on CNBC, NPR, Meet the Press, CNN, and various other national networks and news programs." Zandi has also been the economy's head cheerleader during much of…