In terms of spin, the morning papers are just full of it today:
The Sky Is Falling
"
The economic news yesterday was bad, bad, and more bad, and it is the lead story of all the newspapers. "A sense of economic gloom gripped Washington on Tuesday," the
New York Times writes. The
Washington Post goes with a near-banner headline, "An Economy Thrown Into Turmoil."
USA Today's front page also features several big arrows; the ones for good things are going down and those for bad things are going up. "So this is what a day of reckoning feels like. … If it wasn't clear before Tuesday, it is now: This is no ordinary economic crisis, and it won't be over anytime soon," the paper writes.
So what all was going wrong? Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified in front of Congress that economic growth was "on a sluggish pace," and that on top of that, inflation was a risk. The Commerce Department reported that wholesale prices were up 1.8 percent, and retail sales rose just 0.1 percent in June over the previous month and were down 0.5 percent when gas-station sales were excluded. The stock market was down 93 points, and
stocks in London, Paris, and Tokyo suffered as well. The dollar fell to a new low against the euro. Police in California had to be summoned
to restore order at banks, where customers waited in line to withdraw their money. "It was a day of ugliness," said
one analyst quoted in the
Los Angeles Times. "What else can you say?"
The lone (sort of) optimistic voice of the day belonged to President Bush, who held a snap press conference at which, in the
words of the New York Times, "he felt compelled to remind Americans that their deposits were insured up to $100,000."
http://www.slate.com/id/2195464?wpisrc=newsletter