Paul Krugman tells us to read James Wolcott, who has been inexplicably torturing himself by watching the Fox Business channel so the rest of us don't have to.
Wielding his keyboard like a stiletto, Wolcott delivers a sophisticated rendition of a familiar theme: For conservative commentators, when the stock market goes down, it is a verdict on Obama. But when it goes up, it's simply irrational. Don't be fooled by the resurgence in your 401K and college fund portfolios, folks -- once investors finally understand the true implications of health care reform and Keynesian fiscal policy they will sell, sell, sell. Variations on this formula can be found on all the business news channels, but naturally, as Krugman notes, the virus is strongest at Fox. The truly baffling part: Fox Business delivers these insights via such renowned economic experts as arch neocon John "blow up the U.N." Bolton, the utterly untrustworthy political consultant Dick Morris, and Ann Coulter.
Investment advice from Ann Coulter? In what alternate reality does that make sense?
Wolcott finishes up his riff with a nice flourish:
...If it were a Republican president in the White House and the Dow was hitting such highs the same week of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the hosts and panelists at Fox would be waving little American flags celebrating the market boom as a fitting toast for the triumph of Western capitalism over communism and a rebuke to naysayers and doubters with souls so gray and faith so brittle.
Meanwhile, if you're looking for economic news a little more grounded in the real economy than the ebbs and flows of the stock market, the weekly jobless claim numbers (seasonally adjusted) for the first week of November dropped again, taking the four week moving average to its lowest total in a year. That is good news, unless you're Fox Business, in which case it is probably yet another reason to stock up on gold.
Shares