On Thursday, the Los Angeles Times‘ Michael Hiltzik chortled over the lower-than-expected retail sales numbers on Thursday and posted in his Times blog:

The ideological spinners on the state of the U.S. economy made much of the recent upward revision in third-quarter GDP numbers and even more of retailers’ initially upbeat claims about “Black Thursday” crowds, as though honest, objective reporting that cited the tapped-out consumer, layoff announcements, and high energy prices were nothing but lefty attacks on the superb economic leadership of George W. Bush. Wait till the November retail sales figures arrive on Thursday, they said–that’ll prove that this is gonna be one of the best Christmas seasons ever!

Well, the numbers are in, and they stink. [snip]

… You can praise tax cuts for the wealthy as a great economic growth tool until you convince yourself it’s true, but things will always look a lot different down here on Planet Earth. A commenter on an imbecilic Ann Althouse post suggested that the newspapers are full of gloomy economic analysis because of all the layoffs and cutbacks in the industry. Uh-huh. Let’s ask the auto workers, airline workers, and other hourly workers if they agree.

We posted on Friday that you can’t abuse single pieces of data this way — unless, of course, you have an agenda.

Then, on Friday the Labor Department reported that the economy added 215,000 new jobs in November, and the unemployment rate stayed a satisfactory 5%.

Assessments of this news included “The latest readings on the U.S. economy suggest it is humming along (Wall Street Journal),” “The strong November number, the biggest monthly increase since July, suggested that employers are scrambling for workers in response to a strongly growing economy. (New York Times),” and even “Analysts said the rebound in job growth in November reflected a strong economy that has been able to overcome the damage inflicted by the Gulf Coast hurricanes and spike in energy prices (Los Angeles Times).”

Will we see an update from Hiltzik? A reassessment that you can’t hang your hat on any single economic stat? Or will he stay silent and prove our earlier point about who’s really doing the Ideological spinning here?

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We always include this, but no one ever does it: our other Hiltzik posts are here (plus, perhaps more interesting, one about a hot French anchorwoman …)

Update: An update on the economic news since Hiltzik’s post is here.

Technorati Tags: economy, LA Times, LAT, Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 4th, 2005 at 11:53 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, Nemesises ... Nemesi?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.