Personal Finance

*****Update at end of post includes detailed response to unhappy e-mail messages concerning this subject.As someone that has done a lot of economic writing and financial media analysis, I'm used to gloom and doom from journalists. However, Saturday's Associated Press article concerning the credit crunch and how it's impacting the mortgage market could be the worst example of economic and…

For years one of the great unanswered questions along Main and Wall streets has been why, in the midst of 24 consecutive quarters of uninterrupted growth, polls have regularly found Americans sour about the economy. On Tuesday, a battle between the New York Times liberal economics columnist Paul Krugman and WOR radio's Steve Malzberg offered a clue. In fact, after 16 minutes of sparring on…

The Anchoress, a three-time Weblog Awards finalist and 2007 Catholic Blog Awards Winner (congratulations!) in the Best Political/Social Commentary category (scroll down at link to see it), delivered a cold but necessary shower earlier this evening to those of us who are tempted to exaggerate or overstate the impact New Media is having on most Americans. I'll bet that a lot of us can relay similar…

Which prominent pundit has called Barack Obama a "sucker" and a "fool"?A. Rush LimbaughB. Ann CoulterC. Michelle MalkinD. Mark LevinE. Laura IngrahamJeopardy theme-music playing . . .

Someone needs to tell me why this news about discretionary income isn't as significant as I believe it is. But first, three warnings: 1. I'm not about to spend the $250 needed to read the full report from the Conference Board that backs the story (their "about" page is here). 2. I don't feel totally comfortable with how the statistic is measured -- "Households with discretionary income, as…

What could be more timely than a study about debt? With all the networks crying about oil prices and threats to the economy, consumers are feeling squeezed. Director of the Business & Media Institute, Dan Gainor appeared on the Fox Business Channel today to talk about the Culture & Media Institute and Business & Media Institute joint study, "DEBT Who'$ responsible?" That found…

NewsBusters has been reporting for the last several years that in the midst of the media's fascination with global warming alarmism, the financial ramifications of proposed solutions to this potentially nonexistent problem have been almost universally ignored. On Tuesday, the Washington Post boldly broke with such disingenuousness by publishing a shocking front page article entitled "Climate is…

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…

The lesson from this post isn't bias as much as it is making sure not to get taken in by Old Media overreactions. Jim Cramer of CNBC's "Mad Money" went mad on Friday, declaring Armageddon in this video rant on Friday (watch the whole thing to see just how out-of-control he was; his declaration is at 1:40 in the vid -- "in the fixed-income markets, we have Armageddon."). The first trading day…