We had wanted to write about the role of models and more important, model assumptions in the ongoing Bear Stearns hedge fund debacle, and Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times, in her story, “When Models Misbehave,” provided some useful intelligence. With all due respect to Morgenson, while she touches on some dimensions of the […]
Read more...In case you missed it, the US stock market was rattled by the continuing aftershocks of the Bear Stearns subprime-related hedge fund fallout, with the Dow down 185, and Bear itself was down in line with the Dow (both fell 1.4%, although Bear was up slightly in the aftermarket at this hour). Now the odd […]
Read more...A more accurate title might be “The Wall Street Journal Goes Out of Its Way to Demonize Chavez.” Narrowly speaking, Venezuela (except perhaps its actions as an OPEC member) are outside the beat of this blog. However, we do take a keen interest in the biases in the Wall Street Journal’s reporting, and this one […]
Read more...We have been saying for some time that a housing recovery was quite a way off, and official opinion has finally caught up with our views (or more accurately, has decided to acknowledge obvious but unpleasant reality). The Weekend Wall Street Journal reports in a page one story, “Economists See Housing Slump Enduring Longer.” The […]
Read more...As we have said before, the Wall Street Journal’s news reporting isn’t all its cracked up to be. One pattern we’ve noticed is a tendency to put a positive spin on economic news. Now we’ve detected a second: failing to report when powerful foreign interests jerk America’s chain. When the US said that it would […]
Read more...The government that told us that there were WMD in Iraq has also told us that payrolls increased by 157,000 in May. We’ve pointed out before that the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s monthly job report has a well established history of being unreliable and overstated. The Business Employment Dynamics report, which is far more detailed […]
Read more...For those who don’t know about him, Jim Grant of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer has been a long standing and highly regarded advocate of probity, common sense, and historical memory. Of course, that means he is completely out of fashion. But Grant has a loyal following and even those who differ with his skeptical outlook […]
Read more...We’ve noted more than once that quite a few government statistics near and dear to analysts and investors, such as GDP, inflation, and employment growth, are pretty iffy. So you don’t think we are unfairly singling out the government, some measures produced by the private sector are also questionable. A prime example is foreclosure statistics, […]
Read more...Earlier this month, the national science academies of the G8 plus those of China, India, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, and India, issued a strongly worded joint statement about global warming and energy usage. Let us stress that it is pretty much unheard of for this many independent science bodies to agree on such an unequivocal […]
Read more...I have spent the entire long weekend avoiding dealing with this article by David Ranson and Penny Russell, “Does the Fed Matter?” in Friday’s Wall Street Journal. The reason is that if I got going, there is so much in it that is off beam, misleading, or just plain wrong that it would be hard […]
Read more...To clarify: this list of “censored,” meaning seriously underreported, articles is for 2007 and covers stories from roughly July 2005 through June 2006. I call you attention to it primarily because it’s important, but secondarily, because we actually discussed a few on this blog (they appear to continue to be underreported), despite the fact that […]
Read more...This was the headline of the lead story in the weekend edition of the Financial Times, and oddly, it appears to have been picked up in no other news organ tracked by Google News. Now even though other advanced countries have drug problems too, the US is the only one that thinks it can fly […]
Read more...Confession: I have a weakness for certain types of trash, and one category I enjoy is tacky corporate litigation. What constitutes “tacky” is very much in the eye of the beholder, but I particularly enjoy seeing the aggressor hoist on his own petard. And it’s even more fun when the party that overplayed its hand […]
Read more...When a stalwart member of the right disassociates itself from the Wall Street Journal’s editorial policies, you know things are bad. Thanks to Brad DeLong for this item. From the National Review’s blog, The Corner: ….the Wall Street Journal editorial conference…. I was… well, no, not foaming at the mouth, but gaping in wonder at […]
Read more...I am beginning to wonder whether there is a single statistic related to the state of the economy that can be trusted. The latest data point to bite the dust is the widely-quoted factoid that 13% of subprime mortgages are in default. Turns out not only is this number wrong, but the methodology used to […]
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