NYT Starts Off Good News With a Sucker Punch

Yet another mouth organ for the Democratic Party is insisting on watering down good economic news with bad. Recently I posted about USA Today, a long time Dem water carrier, mixing high new home sales with bad news.

Now the Grey Lady must have really scratched their heads and wrung their hands about just how they could portray a great 4.8% growth for the GDP in the first quarter. They finally decided a good sucker punch in the beginning of the story would do just the job. Here is the leading paragraph:

Gas prices are rising, as are mortgage rates. House prices in many once-hot markets have started slipping. The American automobile industry shows no sign of recovery. And the paychecks of most workers have not even kept up with inflation over the last four years.

While the title of the column claims the economy is expanding, I think most people would read this first paragraph and assume they read the title wrong and move on thinking "Yeah, tell me about it." This must be the hope of the author, because for a liberal it gets "worse". The news gets even better when they look under the hood at how the conomy is doing better. Some think the economy is simply being driven by a few lucky industries while the rest are suffering. The next section talks about the economy diversifying:

The industries leading the way are ones that have been receiving far less attention than cars or real estate, though they have been adding thousands of new workers each month. In the last year, hospitals, doctors' offices and other health care employers have created almost 300,000 jobs; restaurants have added 230,000; and local governments — including schools — have added 170,000.

"The good news for the U.S. is that growth has diversified," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at Global Insight, an economic research firm. "We aren't just relying on the consumer and housing."

A diverse economy is a great sign of strength because a couple of bad turns in one industry doing well doesn't take down the whole economy. This economy is showing so much strength in so many areas. In fact the issue on everyone's mind, gas prices, are an undeniable indicator that this economy is doing well. So well that we are consuming a lot of fuel making demand challenge the supply limits. If Democrats were running Washington you can bet that these mouth organs would be shouting news of this economy on the rooftops. Instead every piece of good news must be watered down, distorted or some other tactic rather than just letting it stand alone. For once I would love to see good economic news without the circus antics.