If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it: I was riding along the other day with a friend who started bewailing the bad economy. BAD ECONOMY? Yep, it was a friend who gets her news from traditional sources. Here is the synopsis of an editorial from today’s IBD:
“The Dow had just pierced 13,000, but TV news anchors couldn’t fathom why. All the data, they noted, showed the economy doing worse, not better. But therein lies a problem with media market analysis.”
IBD stipulates that analysts don’t really know why the economy does what it does until months later:
“But don’t tell that to Katie Couric. On April 25, the day the market breached 13,000, she fretted on the ‘CBS Evening News’ that ‘even as investors are making money in the market . . . there are concerns tonight about the rest of the U.S. economy.’
“CBS reporter Anthony Mason seconded the motion. ‘Wall Street and Main Street appear to be headed in different directions,’ he said, according to transcripts provided by the Media Research Center. ‘While the stock market’s been racing ahead, the economy has been slowing down. Housing is mired in a slump.’…
“With stock and economic coverage like that, it’s no wonder that 63% of Americans feel economic conditions are no better than ‘fair’ or ‘poor,’ and that most expect a recession in the next 12 months, according to the latest IBD/TIPP Poll, results of which were featured Monday in the first part of this series.”