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If the Washington Post doesn’t like it. That would explain the lead sentence of its lead front page story on the elections in France and Greece on Sunday:
Image by League of Women Voters of California LWVC+
“The shrill anti-incumbent message that has emerged from a pair of European elections carries a threat to the U.S. economic recovery and a political warning for President Obama, whose reelection prospects could hinge on whether the economy can improve.”
Other newspapers might leave such editorializing for the opinion pages, but not Fox on 15th Street.
The substance in this statement is also not especially accurate. U.S. exports to Europe are only about 2 percent of U.S. GDP. This means that even a sharp drop in exports (e.g. 10 percent) would only imply a reduction in growth of around 0.2 percentage points. That is unlikely to make much of a difference in U.S. growth.
If Europe’s turmoil leads to more uncertainty in financial markets (short of a full-fledged meltdown), it could actually benefit the United States. Interest rates in the United States plummeted following the spike in interest rates on Spanish and Italian debt last summer. The same would likely happen again. This would make it cheaper for people to refinance mortgages and engage in other types of borrowing.
The piece also includes the bizarre assertion:
“A new round of political paralysis that delays Europe’s recovery or calls into question the austerity agreement reached this year to help bail out Greece would probably lead to an immediate slowdown of U.S. economic growth and job creation while confusing bond and equity markets.”
Actually, Europe is not on a path to recovery. It is on a path to recession because of the austerity being imposed by the European Central Bank and the IMF. If this austerity is reversed and Europe starts growing again that would help the U.S. economy.
32 Comments
Like I said in a comment to my own diary, those on the bottom could give a wet slap about what happens to those above them and seeing more than a few end up in the cutter would be considered poetic justice.
Evidently Krugman’s application for a trade mark was rejected.
The 0.01% are making a concerted effort to knock down the markets today. The WaPo article is evidently part of that effort.
No doubt, the “anti-incumbency movement” is worldwide and it’s quite possible Obama MAY get caught up in that especially if it’s obvious what advances we have made over the past couple of years have slowed or halted.
But, Romney is a genuinely unlikable guy and the republicans have been shooting themselves in the foot when it come to female voters, the middle class, Hispanic voters, blacks, and gays.
It IS hysterical, denouncing an election as “shrill”. Damn those shrill voters!
Sour grapes on the front page.
I haven’t read the Washington Post in years. It is stuffy, conservative, and groupthink-ey. They might as well rename themselves “The Conventional Wisdom Digest”.
I do not read the wapo or the nyt. Both are stuffy, self-important papers with op-ed people to support their motu-ness.
Washington Post is creepy and filled with baloney. Creepy baloney.
The largest U.S. export? Garbage, sent primarily to China, to be recycled into new products. Somehow appropriate for a crumbling empire that it’s largest export would be garbage.
The French stormed the Bastille. Perhaps Americans will be forced to storm the WaPo.
Temporarily. An economy doesn’t move on Govt money, It runs on business first.
Meanwhile, austerity is unavoidable no matter who is in office. Other people’s money is much harder to come by these days.
nice image!
Couldn’t agree more. Although I do read Krugman, I stopped reading the WAPO regularly when they dumped Dan Froomkin.
The sad part is that the VSP and the Village do read the Post, and still believe they are trustworthy and even liberal. That’s the only reason to pay attention to their falshoods and refute them.
This is great… I received a note yesterday from an old neighbor of mine saying that the old money folks here and elsewhere would let these elections (riots) slide and would go on about their business of running the universe… What a hoot. AND now the WaPo is running around like Rupe’s not going to give them anymore more money and the Weymouth’s are going out of town for a month and not telling anyone where they’re going…. oh wooh is me….
This is so much fun to watch when the ‘ruling elite’ get their collective asses handed to them on a platter and the note reads ‘BITE ME”… the management.
You are embarrassing yourself again. I appreciate that double-entry bookkeeping is probably above your pay grade, but you ought to give it a try anyway.
ah well
Fortune 500 companies have record profits of $825 billion in 2011
By Agence France-Presse
Monday, May 7, 2012 14:20 EDT
guess they want more
I read NYT news reports (often with a grain of salt) and Krugman. That’s about it, I find them to be very patronizing largely (editorials) and on some issues (such as Israel) so partisan as to be bent.
Both Obama and Romney are genuinely unlikeable, just Romney states openly his intentions while Obama does it secretly in backrooms.
Without business there are no jobs, or Govt revenues. Business is the only wealth creator in the system.
Feel free to demonstrate where I’m wrong.
THAT would be a project worthy of hundreds of man hours.
It would be much much easier to demonstrate where you’ve been right.
List below:
Please do not feed the trolls.
It only makes them more obnoxious.
A good analysis of the meaning of the Greek election from Alexis Papachelas of ekathimerini.com. Especially this last part.
This can be applied here as well.
So who gave the bankster “engines of job creation” all their money?
That’s right, the Federal Government — aka you and me.
By the way, did you notice that the very rich have made out like bandits at our expense over the last half-century? Yet they lobby the government for more free money, more than any of the welfare mothers your hero and paid stooge for the rich Reagan loved to demonize.
Tell us where the guys you worship have been creating jobs lately. (Hint: It’s not in America.)
You slept through Econ 101, didn’t you? Oh, well, you had a lot of company there, judging by the way the governments have chosen to get out of this recession.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
G. Santayana
Here’s an excerpt from an article that Shooter’s too cowardly to read:
Oh, and many if not most of those workers, especially in India, get free education all the way to vo-tech or even university level, so they’re not saddled with crippling school debts as are most Americans who want even middling degrees nowadays.
But I digress:
Your move, shooter.
I hear Willard is very fond of being austere except when it comes to flipping co’s and loading em up with debt.
Will he do it to the USA too and become the second coming of W?
???? I pretty much agree with all that. On the world market American labor is overpriced and second rate.
Don’t forget that 0′s ‘job creation tsar’ is j immelt of ge who is shipping out of country more jobs than he is creating here in the good old US of A.
The IDEA that a country could, should or would share its wealth with all its people is an IDEA that must be crushed. To hell with liberty, equality and fraternity, give me fascism and a better car than my neighbor…and a vacation home in the Hamptons….and a yatch…amd an inside track to Andover and Yale for my kids.
And so Dean Baker’s mano a mano struggle with the WaPo continues.
I wonder how long it will be until the WaPo is insolvent? What constituency do they serve these days? Peterson and the deficit hawks? Maybe we should all become concern trolls for WaPo just as they insist on being concern trolls for a Government with a non-convertible fiat currency having a floating exchange rate and no debts payable in a currency not its own?