Remember when I was talking about economic journamalism on durable goods orders?<\/p>\n
Well Bloomberg gets the story right, with U.S. Economy: Durable-Goods Orders Hover Near Lowest Since 1996<\/a><\/span>, but Reuters (U.S. April durable goods orders post biggest gain in 16 months<\/span><\/a>), and CNBC (Durable Goods in Surprise Jump; Jobless Claims Dip<\/span><\/a>), both get it very, very wrong.<\/p>\n Let’s roll the Bloomberg story for what is going on:<\/p>\n Orders rose 1.9 percent in April after a 2.1 percent drop in March that was more than twice as large as previously estimated<\/span>, the Commerce Department said in Washington. Meanwhile, the Labor Department said 6.79 million people are collecting jobless benefits, and another report showed new-home sales were lower than forecast in April.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/p>\n OK, this looks like a 1.9% bump, which is a significant<\/span> bump, but Bloomberg covered this as low numbers.<\/p>\n Why is this correct, and Reuters and CNBC wrong?<\/p>\n That phrase, “more than twice as large as previously estimated,” is why it is wrong.<\/p>\n As Reuters notes a few ‘graphs down:<\/p>\n However, March orders were revised sharply lower, falling 2.1 percent from the previously reported 0.8 percent decline.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So, we are comparing initial <\/span> estimates for April with revised<\/span> numbers for March.<\/p>\n If you were to compare apples to apples, you would have 1.9%-2.1%-(-0.8%), or 1.9%-2.1%+0.8%, or a growth of 0.6% comparing apples to apples.<\/p>\n In fact, you get a lot of this out of the government statistic machine, and it’s faithfully echoed by the press.<\/p>\n You have a number that is an improvement over the last month’s (revised) numbers, and it’s really<\/span> good news…..And then, a few weeks later it’s revised down, and the new<\/span> figures for the next<\/span> month come out, and they look really good compared to the downwardly revised previous figures.<\/p>\n Rinse, lather, repeat. Remember when I was talking about economic journamalism on durable goods orders? Well Bloomberg gets the story right, with U.S. Economy: Durable-Goods Orders Hover Near Lowest Since 1996, but Reuters (U.S. April durable goods orders post biggest gain in 16 months), and CNBC (Durable Goods in Surprise Jump; Jobless Claims Dip), both get it very, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1004,974,979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance","category-hack-journalism","category-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191980"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"