Dean Baker
Truthout, November 5, 2012

Dean Baker
The Guardian Unlimited, 24 de octubre 2012
En Inglés

Robert Samuelson sounds like he is really angry at American voters since it doesn't look like they are following his advice. He therefore pulls out all the stops in misrepresenting the country's economic situation in his column today.

He starts quickly, telling us in the second paragraph:

"There’s a triple threat to stronger economic growth. The first stems from the legacy of the 2007-09 financial crisis, which induced households and companies to shed debt and, more important, made both more cautious spenders. The second is an aging population that stunts expansion of the labor force. Finally, chronic deficits — caused increasingly by a surge of promised benefits — imply future spending cuts and/or tax increases, which might dampen economic growth."

Okay, on the first point those with access to the Internet know that neither households nor businesses are especially cautious spenders at the moment. Here's the consumption story brought to you by our friends at the Commerce Department.

Source; Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The story here is that while consumers are not spending as large a share of their income as they were at the peaks of the stock or housing bubbles, they are spending a larger share of their income today than they were on average in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, or even 1990s. (The adjusted consumption measure has to do with a technical issue, the statistical discrepancy in national income accounts.) So consumers are not being overly cautious, contrary to Samuelson' assertion.

Dean Baker
Salon, November 1, 2012

November 2, 2012

November 2, 2012 (Jobs Byte)

Most of the news and opinion pieces about Venezuela that appear in the U.S. press paint an overwhelmingly negative picture of the country’s political landscape.  But Venezuela’s October 7 presidential elections have generated a flurry of articles with a d