Business Coverage

Teasing an upcoming report that amounted to Obama administration propaganda on Thursday’s NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie proclaimed: “Fighting for family leave....How one mom's courageous battle for more time at home made it all the way to the White House.”  

The catalog of wishful thinking technically classified as reports on the economy emanating from the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, grows with virtually each passing business day. One of yesterday's additions to the mountainous pile came from the AP's Christopher Rugaber. Tasked with covering the Federal Reserve's report on October's industrial production, he devoted 10 of his…

The federal government kicked off fiscal 2016 yesterday by reporting that its October deficit was $136.5 billion, 12 percent higher than the $121.7 billion shortfall seen in October 2014. Single-month comparisons can be tricky because of timing differences, but the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger noted that analyzing the results from this October and last October is an apples-to-apples…

The "fact-checking" press has become a parody of itself during the past several years. It's not only because of their irritating penchant for putting statements by Republicans and conservatives under a twisted microscope while ignoring drop-dead obvious falsehoods delivered by Democrats and leftists. It's because, among other things, the fact-checkers often admit that a statement is true, but…

Tuesday evening, Associated Press economics writers Christopher Rugaber and Josh Boak attempted to "fact check" statements made by candidates at the just-completed Republican presidential debate. Claiming that "The fourth Republican presidential debate was thick on economic policy — and with that came a variety of flubs and funny numbers," the two writers botched at least half of the six points…

Today's "I'm just making stuff up on the fly" award nominee is Martin Crutsinger at the Associated Press. The AP reporter, named by National Review's Kevin Williamson as America's "Worst Economics Writer" in 2013, lived down to his designation in a Tuesday report on the Census Bureau's September Monthly Trade Inventories and Sales release. He described a sales increase which didn't come close to…

The political definition of Cronyism is: government policy that favors one or more specific beneficiaries - at the expense of everyone else.  To wit: $80 billion of the 2009 “Stimulus” was wasted on “green energy” companies - 80% of whom were Barack Obama donors.  Amongst the parade of horribles contained therein: the government took money from energy companies - to fund competitors to their…

In a humorous exchange during MSNBC’s 12 p.m. ET hour coverage of President Obama rejecting the Keystone Pipeline, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd and breaking news anchor Brian Williams mocked the idea that the long-expected decision was in any way a major new development.

Add Arizona's Meritus Health Partners to the growing list of Affordable Care Act co-op failures. The Daily Signal reports that this makes 11 of 23 such state Obamacare co-ops which will have closed their doors by the end of 2015 after three or fewer years in operation. The Associated Press, which, along with most of the rest of the establishment press, has been playing aggressive defense on…

As is so often the case with such stories, one can tell how favorable or disappointing a government report on the economy was by whether a story about it is still present at the Associated Press's "Top Business News" page several hours after its release. Today's news from the Census Bureau on September's factory orders and shipments, released at 10 a.m., was extremely disappointing. Thus, it is…

On Thursday, the government reported that the nation's economy turned in yet another quarter of poor economic performance, estimating that its gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 1.5 percent in the third quarter. The business press almost universally downplayed the news, and told readers that the fourth quarter will be better. No one talked about how much the tepid growth of the…

Many of the state cooperative health insurers, or "co-ops," set up under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, have gotten into serious financial trouble quite quickly. Almost half have cracked up completely. Specifically, as noted at Forbes.com on Thursday morning, "[O]f the 24 Obamacare co-ops funded with federal tax dollars, one (Vermont’s) never got approval to sell…

Here's what should be an easy question: With data which has already been seasonally adjusted, what's more important — a) the fact that an index is a) up by 3 percent in the past year or b) the fact that it has fallen 5 percent in the past four months? The correct answer is obviously b) — unless you're a writer for the Associated Press whose mission is to convince readers that the housing market…

The government's Personal Income and Outlays report for September bore more evidence of a slowing economy. Consumer spending rose by only 0.1 percent, trailing expectations of 0.2 percent. That's troubling news, given that the optimists believe that strong consumer spending will supposedly drive stronger fourth-quarter economic growth. Lucia Mutikani's coverage at Reuters made a common error in…