Great “catch” by Byron York of the Washington Examiner …
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The front page of Sunday’s New York Times is filled with hope about the nation’s economic situation. The lead story, reporting a decline in the unemployment rate from 9.5 percent in June to 9.4 percent in July, begins by declaring that, “The most heartening employment report since last summer suggested on Friday that a recovery was under way — and perhaps gathering steam.”
- NY Times, Job Losses Slow, Signaling Momentum for a Recovery, August 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/business/economy/08jobs.html?_r=1&hpw
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The Times hasn’t always been so optimistic when it comes to one-tenth-of-a-point declines in the unemployment rate. On this very day in 1992, in the midst of the presidential campaign between George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the government also reported that the unemployment rate ticked downward by one tenth of a point, , edging down to 7.7 percent from 7.8 percent,”and the Times’ treatment was far more restrained:
Even though the number of jobs actually went up in July 1992 (as opposed to the decline of 247,000 jobs in July 2009), the 1992 Times reported that the economic news “gave no suggestion that the economic recovery was breaking out of its painfully slow pace or, more important, that the job growth was picking up enough to push the unemployment rate down significantly … and the improvement is not enough to signal a stronger economic recovery .”
- NY Times, JOBLESS RATE DIPS A NOTCH TO 7.7% IN MIXED SHOWING, August 8, 1992
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/08/business/jobless-rate-dips-a-notch-to-7.7-in-mixed-showing.html
As it turned out, the one-tenth-of-a-point drop in the unemployment rate in July 1992 signaled the end of the increase in the jobless rate.
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Source article:
Washington Examiner, “NY Times touts economic momentum, recovery; in 1992, not so much”, York, 08/08/09
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Times-touts-economic-momentum-recovery-in-1992-not-so-much-52781412.html
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The Homa Files 
August 11, 2009 at 12:47 am |
It’s some combination of media bias and poor reporting on economic matters. While I love reading the NY Times, I certainly don’t rely on the NY Times for insight on business or economic matters. I’ll go to the The Economist, the WSJ or directly to the data. There is a lot of great reporting in the WSJ and the occasional irritatingly poorly crafted article as well. Curiously, Jim Cramer claims that you can spot a market bottom by watching the NY Times (see pages 212-214 of Real Money).