I Takes Every Bit Of Lib Pretzel Logic To Be An APologist For The...

[obumazombie]

Twisted reporting by the AP on an owebumeconomy thoroughly twisted by owebuma...

The press's failure to tell the public how seriously the U.S. economy is struggling is not the most egregious exercise in reality avoidance we've seen during the past several months.
The willful denial of Iran's intent to destroy Israel and its Western enemies, the refusal to acknowledge the inherent institutional ugliness of Planned Parenthood, and the failure to accurately characterize Hillary Clinton's deliberate circumvention of established national security laws and protocols (all because "Her personal privacy was more important than the national interest") are clearly worse.

Nevertheless, the economy-related deceptions have not been unimportant.
The press promotes the general impression that, well, conditions aren't ideal, but they're the best we can hope for
— and besides, our mess isn't as bad as what we're seeing in rest of the world (and by the way, if the U.S. economy does tank, it will be the rest of the world's fault, and certainly not Dear Leader's).

Let's compare Wednesday's exercise in furthering that impression at the Associated Press and compare it to what is really happening.

Here are several paragraphs from Martin Crutsinger's Wednesday report following the Census Bureau's July Factory Orders and Shipments release this morning (bolds are mine):

US FACTORY ORDERS EDGE UP 0.4 PERCENT IN JULY




Orders to U.S. factories posted a modest gain in July, helped by the biggest rise in motor vehicles orders in a year and a solid gain in a category that tracks business investment plans.

Factory orders rose 0.4 percent in July, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. Orders had increased a much larger 2.2 percent in June.

... The modest increase in factory orders in July suggests that manufacturing is still grappling with a variety of challenges, from falling energy prices to a stronger dollar, which hurts exports.

... Orders in the business investment category had fallen in four of the previous five months before June, reflecting the soft patch that manufacturing has faced this year.

U.S. manufacturers must contend with a number of headwinds including a sharp slowdown in growth in China, a strong dollar, which makes U.S. products more expensive in export markets, and falling oil prices, which have caused energy companies to cut back on their invest spending.

So, according to the AP and Crutsinger, sure, manufacturing isn't setting the world on fire.
But it still posted a "modest gain" in spite of dealing with "a variety of challenges," and this year has seen a "soft patch" due to those "headwinds."

But really, people, it's not all that bad.

Horse manure.

The Census Bureau's detailed manufacturing orders and shipments tables show that year-over-year monthly manufacturing activity fell behind the previous year in November 2014 and has gradually gone into ever-deeper decline this year through July.
Given that the Institute for Supply Management's Manufacturing Index dropped in August, it's likely that the current nine-month year-over year losing streaks in both metrics will continue for at least another month.

How ugly has this year been?
This ugly (more detail is at my home blog for those who can stand it):







This is horrible:

The dollar value of shipments is down by over 3-1/2 percent from last year and is even lower than 2013.
It's only marginally ahead of 2008.
The dollar value of orders is down by over 7 percent from last year, is more than 2 percent below 2013, and is even lower than 2008.
The above amounts represent about one-third of the nation's Gross Domestic Product.
It's reasonable to wonder how GDP can still be positive when indicators such as the above have been so negative for so long.

If this were happening during a Republican or conservative administration, the AP's Crutsinger would (validly) be wondering the same thing.
But since this is a Democratic administration, the Associated Press is really the Administration's Press, we've gone nine months with barely a mention of the serious ongoing decline in manufacturing.

Instead, readers are led to believe that all is well, or at least tolerably so.

full article...


http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tom-blumer/2015/09/03/ap-coverage-manufacturing-continues-ignore-its-steep-documented#sthash.jAkS1HwN.dpuf

[obumazombie]

Even abysmal jobs numbers don't squash summer of recovery talking points...

A popular meme in the wake of Friday's jobs report seen at many media outlets is that August's reported job growth of 173,000 seasonally adjusted jobs is a virtual lock to be revised up by 50,000, or 78,000, or perhaps even more, since such revisions during the past three years have been unusually large.

Well, since they opened that can of worms, let me make clear to everyone that even if those revisions materialize, August will still have been a singularly unimpressive month.

At the Associated Press late Friday afternoon, Christopher Rugaber wrote that "August's jobs totals are typically revised much higher in later months, because of the difficulties in adjusting the data for the end of millions of summer jobs."

On Saturday, the AP's Josh Boak wrote: "... economists say seasonal adjustment quirks could cause the August jobs figure of 173,000 to be revised up by 50,000 or more."

At the Fiscal Times web site, Rob Garver quoted an economist who thinks that significant upward revisions are a lock:

Indeed, PNC chief Economist Stuart Hoffman noted: “[T]he August preliminary payroll jobs number is notorious for understating the final revised data by a huge average of 78,000 jobs in the past three years, so there will be upward revisions to the 173,000 gain in the next two months.”
Okay, but upward adjustments of 50,000 or even 100,000 are not going to be enough to make August look good in comparison to the past several years (and remember, all of this has been occurring during a slow-motion "recovery" which is impressing very few everyday Americans).

The following charts show the raw (i.e., not seasonally adjusted) job additions during the past five-plus years, both overall and in the private sector:







Even if actual nonfarm payroll job additions get revised up to either 308,000 (258K + 50K) or 358,000 (258K + 100K), that performance will still be the worst August in four years.
The August seasonally adjusted figure might go as high as about 250,000 from its current 173,000, but that won't change the fact that what happened on the ground wasn't impressive at all compared to previous years.

Even if actual private sector payroll job additions get revised up to either 121,000 (71K + 50K) or 171,000 (71K + 100K), that performance will still be worse than every August from 2010 to 2014.
The private sector's seasonally adjusted figure might go as high as about 220,000 from its current 140,000, but that won't change the fact that what happened on the ground was the worst performance in six years.

As I noted at my home blog on Friday after the job report's release:

... the seasonally adjusted results (+173K overall and +140K for the private sector) both look overstated by 50K-75K. How convenient that Team Obama catches a (manipulated?) “break” just before the Labor Day weekend.
Because of the strangely high seasonally adjusted results, if the revisions commentators seem to take as a given really materialize, the press will be celebrating how August was another strong or even very strong month.

That won't really be the case unless the upward revisions reach well past six figures, at which point we should probably start asking, "What's the point of paying attention to the initial jobs reports?

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tom-blumer/2015/09/06/press-meme-august-job-growth-was-lowballed-if-revised-it-will-still#sthash.DrJbv9ro.dpuf

[JohnnyReb]

It is seen by democrats as an improvement...............................in their voter base.