The Economist Gets a Base Hit

On the other hand, here is the Economist doing what the Economist does well:

Free exchange | Economist.com: IT IS HARD to contemplate the new US GDP figures without a mental image forming of Republican campaign strategists rolling around on the ground, gripping their bellies and moaning "It hurts! It hurts!" Second quarter GDP growth was a lacklustre 2.6% (annualised), well below economists expectations. This morning (this afternoon, here in London) the news came that America's economy had disappointed again, growing by just 1.6% in the third quarter, rather than the 2.2% that economists had been expecting. There has been a tepid attempt to bring up the Dow's record levels, but this has fallen rather flat: the record isn't a record if you adjust for inflation, and anyway, the Dow isn't a very good proxy for economic health, or even investor confidence. It has only thirty companies in it, and these are weighted by cost rather than market capitalisation, which means that it is easily blown about by outsized movements in the prices of a few stocks. The S&P 500, which is much more representative, is still well below its 2000 peak.

In the New York Times on Tuesday, Eduardo Porter wrote This Time, it's Not the Economy:

President Bush, in hopes of winning credit for his party’s stewardship of the economy, is spending two days this week campaigning on the theme that the economy is purring. “No question that a strong economy is going to help our candidates,” Mr. Bush said in a CNBC interview yesterday, “primarily because they have got something to run on, they can say our economy’s good because I voted for tax relief.”

But Republican candidates do not seem to be getting any traction from the glowing economic statistics with midterm elections just two weeks away...

We'd suggest that this is because the statistics, like GDP, are not actually glowing; in fact, they're barely emitting enough light to check your watch by. Even fantastic headline numbers, like 4.6% unemployment, disguise weak wage growth and sagging labour force participation. Perhaps even more problematically for the Republicans, what growth there is isn't being felt by the average voter. Companies are increasing compensation--but they're spending it on benefits like health insurance, which doesn't feel the same as a wage increase even if you're one of the unlucky few who gets a $100,000 cancer treatment out of it. And income growth is concentrated among the wealthy, who are too few to swing an election...

Comments

[Ken Houghton]

Aw, c'mon, that's worth at least a double (certainly so by their usual ground rules). They (1) recognized that a "record" Dow doesn't mean much (mitigated by the S&P 500 reference, which will be well below its 2000 high for most of the rest of our lives, sanity prevailing), (2) recognize that the UR is largely affected by NILF, (3) noticed the income disparity (mirable dictu in itself), (4) got a dig in on the "tax relief," and (5) even piled on where they would usually be obtuse ("Perhaps even more problematically for the Republicans, what growth there is isn't being felt by the average voter.").

In short, the Economist piece looks like an AngryBear post; even Manny Ramirez could reach second with one of those.

[Bupa]

And where else but the Economist have you read about the boom in Albania? Also, I didn't know until this week's issue that "the Norwegian curriculum requires that all 14 year olds learn about homosexuality." The article ends with a plug for teaching in countries other than Norway "that evolution occurs by natural selection."

It's sad that you have to read it selectively, but let's not give up on them yet. Besides, when they screw up, as they usually do on their coverage of American politics, they provide great fodder for your "Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?" series.