WTF Econo-Journalism: CBC Edition

Okay, this is a minor complaint, but those are my specialty. While watching the news (CBC Vancouver) this evening, I overheard the anchor-woman say the following:

"Another sign that the economy is on the road to recovery - inflation in
July fell to its lowest level in years"

I've asked this before, and I'll keep asking, are there any editors anymore? I assume someone wrote the above for the teleprompter and someone else signed off on it. And yet, there is some blonde news anchor on my TV making an elementary mistake while projecting absolute confidence, leaving me no recourse but to scream obscenities at the ceiling.

Stephen Gordon reminds us not to read the National Post

Terence Corcoran has a woefully bad article in the National Post this morning in which he seems to imply that the budget deficit has ballooned largely due to the home renovation tax credit (never mind the impact of the recession on revenues, that's just an excuse used by politicians in Corcoran's world) and "out of control" government spending. Strange that he doesn't mention the impact of bad policy like cutting the GST. Must have slipped his mind.

As usual when an out of his depth journalist makes a stupid economic argument, Stephen Gordon pounces.

Home Construction Rebounds

...at least that was the headline in the Globe and Mail. Now, I don't know who writes headlines, but this is a great example of a misleading one and I'll go ahead and blame the writer - Heather Scoffield. According to Heather, housing starts increased by a "mind boggling" 13.7% in March. She then goes on to enumerate a number of reasons why the uptick in starts may not signal anything significant, which begs the question why the headline was so exuberant.

What didn't make the article? How about the fact that year-over-year March housing starts - a better measure than the highly volatile month-over-month - were down 36% and quarter-over-quarter starts have fallen 20%. Not exactly a rebound.