How Financial Reporters Create Illusion to Cover Up Wall Street's Scams

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: April 13, 2010 2:45:52 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] How Financial Reporters Create Illusion to Cover Up Wall Street's Scams

How Financial Reporters Create Illusion to Cover Up Wall Street's Scams
By Scott Thill, AlterNet
Posted on April 13, 2010, Printed on April 13, 2010
<http://www.alternet.org/story/146414/>

As Charles Dickens reminded us in his classic novel Great Expectations, the line between crime and cash is a 
continually blurry one. And it's easily manipulated by language and narrow self-interest.

For example, let's just consider the overly extensive use of one term: "Unexpectedly." It is especially ubiquitous in 
finance journalism, where it is repeatedly used to console a rightfully nervous readership that, while good news is a 
great expectation, bad news just seems to comes out of nowhere. Although I've been informally following this clumsy 
usage for years now since diving into the hazy, crazy world of finance, I've never run out of daily examples. Just plug 
the term "unexpectedly" into Google News on any given day, and neither will you.

Here's a few that Google coughed up during this writing: "U.S. Home Sales Fall Unexpectedly in Feb.,"ABC News reported. 
"French Consumer Confidence Unexpectedly Falls On Job Concern," Bloomberg News reported. "South Africa Unexpectedly 
Cuts Rates to 6.5%," the Wall Street Journal reported.

Unpacking any of these headlines should be simple enough for those who aren't economists, even without the benefit of 
reading the stories themselves. Nothing in the average American's life and salary, to say nothing of the lenders and 
companies he or she has to deal with, warrants the surveyed optimism of economists who think home sales should be going 
up, rather than down, in any given month.

Meanwhile, France isn't immune to our continuing global recession, which is being further enhanced by deepening 
unemployment and rising corporate profits. So it's no wonder the French don't feel like spending money, when they don't 
have jobs. And although you need to be somewhat savvy on international currencies and markets to suss out the meaning 
of South Africa's rate cut, it's not a stretch to look at the headline and guess, correctly, that the nation is trying 
to encourage demand for its stocks and bonds. In other words, none of these things are unexpected. They make sense and 
cents.

Except to economists and the traders they enable, both of whom lately have been blowing calls with incorrect 
predictions, at a major cost to all of us.

"We always use the terms 'expected' and 'unexpected' when a rate decision, earnings and other data emerge counter to 
our surveys" of economists, Bloomberg spokesperson Judith Czelusniak told AlterNet.

[snip]RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress>




-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com