Last quarter’s economic growth was revised upward to 3.3%. This is fifty percent faster than the hundred-year moving average of 2.2%. What wonderful news.
Or is it? “[T]he outlook for the remainder of the year remained grim,” warns the second sentence of a New York Times article.
Bad reporting is one reason why polling data shows that the public systematically thinks the economy is in worse shape than it actually is. But is it right to blame the Times for simply giving the people what they already want — a cloud to go with their silver lining?
Pessimistic bias is wired into the human brain, it seems. Which makes this writer pessimistic about the state of economic reporting.
Inertia Wins! 