Media Predict Recession Despite Steady Stream of Good Economic News

Workers at the Hollywood Bed Frame Company attend an event to mark the company's expansion in Commerce, California, on April 14, 2017. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)

Commentary

The U.S. economy is in the midst of a boom of historic proportions—but that’s not the impression you’d get from listening to the mainstream media.

Despite the natural vicissitudes of the stock market, the overwhelming reality of our country’s economic development has been nothing short of spectacular.

According to the latest figures from the Labor Department, the number of workers applying for unemployment benefits fell by 3,000 last week, beating the expectations set by pessimistic economic “experts” polled by Reuters, who had predicted an increase of about 4,000.

Meanwhile, a new Zogby Analytics survey of business leaders revealed that 79 percent of owners and executives say they are likely to add new positions in 2019—a strong indication that our current economic boom will continue well into the new year.

Notably, the survey was conducted from Jan. 10-13, weeks after the start of the partial government shutdown, suggesting that most employers do not see gridlock in Washington as a significant impediment to their growth prospects.

“Overall, a majority (55%) of business leaders said it was ‘unlikely’ ... that their businesses would be laying off workers in 2019,” Zogby Analytics wrote, adding that one-third of respondents rated it “very unlikely” that they would have to lay off any workers this year.

The widespread confidence among business leaders is a reflection of the economic renaissance that has taken root during the first two years of Donald Trump’s presidency.

President Trump made economic reform a priority from the very start of his administration, implementing a variety of pro-growth policies that have unleashed America’s economic potential after eight years of stagnation under President Obama.

In order to protect American workers from unfair competition, for instance, the President has negotiated new trade deals to eliminate provisions that put America at an artificial disadvantage. He’s also taken a much stronger stand against Chinese trade manipulation than any other U.S. president, using targeted counter-tariffs to convince Beijing to reduce barriers on American-made products and participate in negotiations on what could end up being the largest trade deal in world history.

President Trump has also relentlessly followed through on his promise to eliminate unnecessary and economically burdensome regulations that stifled private sector growth and limited the ability of businesses to grow and expand.

Most importantly, the president implemented the historic middle class tax cuts that continue to fuel our ongoing economic recovery. According to Zogby Analytics, a 47 percent plurality of business leaders “think The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will ‘help’ their business’” in 2019, compared to just 13 percent who expect the opposite.

Naturally, the mainstream media seem entirely uninterested in highlighting these hugely positive economic developments, preferring to push an entirely different narrative designed to stoke fears of the potential for a recession they’ve been predicting for months in hopes of triggering a self-fulfilling prophecy while undermining the President’s historic effort to secure our border.

CNN, for instance, has published several articles arguing that the partial government shutdown could have a detrimental effect on the U.S. economy, even though the budget impasse impacts only a tiny portion of the labor force.

“This shutdown comes at a time when consumers and businesses were already starting to worry about a downturn on the horizon, and government dysfunction makes everyone more risk averse,” CNN wrote.

To make this assertion, CNN ignores completely the encouraging jobs report issued one day earlier by the Labor Department. Instead, in what has become standard practice in the post-journalism world we now endure, CNN’s “source” is one of its own pessimistic and speculative news articles.

This kind of cherry-picking, manipulation, and distortion isn’t exceptional. The fake news media have been crying wolf about a potential economic downturn for the last two years, wrongly predicting that President Trump’s policies would stifle economic growth and lead to a recession.

The biased mainstream media’s wishful predictions of economic calamity have been proven wrong time and again, and the economic data make it perfectly clear that their latest warning is no more credible than their previous false alarms.

The good news appears to be that America has already internalized this and is tuning the media nonsense out. Across the board demographically and geographically President Trump’s policies are making our lives better. If the media hope to regain any kind of credibility, it’s high time they start reporting about America’s ongoing economic boom, and stop trying to mislead Americans in pursuit of their partisan political agenda.

Jeff Ballabon is a political advisor, media consultant, and former CBS executive.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.