In a post titled “That Bright, Shining Economy Springs A Leak,” Los Angeles Times columnist / blogger Michael Hiltzik gleefully writes that “the ideological spinners on the state of the U.S. economy” who deny “honest, objective reporting that cited the tapped-out consumer, layoff announcements, and high energy prices” have been proven wrong by the November retail sales figures released today.

Hiltzik, as usual, frames his own ideology as “realism” (his opponents, btw, are “amateur” or “imbicilic”).

Let’s try some of that realism stuff.

First, while the retail numbers may have been disappointing, that needs context. They still were up 3.7% over last year, only 5% off the expected 3.9%. That’s not cataclysmic.

More importantly, while consumer spending on goods is an important piece of the economy, it is not the only one. It makes up only 30% or so of GDP (but a third of that is food, leaving only 20% of GDP for clothes, cars, iPods and DVDs). Are retail sales important? Yes. Critical? No.

This allows The Wall Street Journal to legitimately headline a story in tomorrow’s paper “Economy Sends Out Healthy Signals.” ($) It backs the assertion by citing robust manufacturing activity and declining jobless claims.

How did the markets greet the retail sales figures? Was there panic as traders and institutions read Hiltzik and realized that we’re headed for recession?

Uh, no. The S&P 500 closed up 1.2% on the day and other indices gained as well.

Let’s face it. Hiltzik won’t have a good thing to say about the economy while this administration is in office. He’ll take any single data point and torture it in the service of his own ideology. To his discredit, he’s getting the hang of this blogging thing faster than expected.

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Hiltzik continues to make sport of Mary Katharine Ham of HughHewitt.com. Earlier he posted “Ham’s name is new to me, but a few minutes’ inquiry suggests that she’s a twentysomething Georgia grad who received postgraduate training in vacuous sarcasm from the Heritage Foundation before coming under the wing of Hewitt.” Today we learn that the fifty-something Pulitzer Prize winner and Columbia J-School grad has undertaken a “continuing effort to provide the amateur Mary Katharine Ham with the journalism education she failed to get while working toward her newspaper journalism degree at the University of Georgia.” Nothing like a little intellectual condescension to prove your point, is there?

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Our other Hiltzik posts are here (plus one about a hot French anchorwoman …)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 1st, 2005 at 10:54 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under I knew I'd use my Econ major, LA Times' Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.