Matt Yglesias has a pretty hilarious demonstration of the financial press in action:
Yesterday I read: “Oil prices posted their biggest one-day gain on Monday, jumping more than $25 a barrel as investors dashed into commodities on concerns about the government’s plan to bail out the financial system.”
Then I wrote:
But of course if crude oil prices had gone down, we’d be “explaining” this as “concerns about the government’s plan to bail out the financial system” driving pessimism about growth. The truth is, none of the people writing this stuff have any real idea of why things are happening.
And now today:
Crude oil futures prices fell Tuesday as declining stock prices and the soft dollar signaled some investor concern over the United States government bailout of Wall Street and the market moved on after technical factors provoked a surge on Monday.
I find it amazing that this stuff gets published.
