Friday, March 4, 2011

Sloppy Reporting and Confirmation Bias, Part II

Several weeks ago I wrote a piece called The Sheer Stupidity of U.S. Political Dialog where I noted that people on the right and left were equally guilty of politically tinged crap, only the type of crap was different. I made this observation about the political left:

Positive economic numbers are rigged; negative economic numbers are sacrosanct. As a corollary, all bullish economists are tools while bearish economists are completely trustworthy. Finally, take one bad economic number in a series of good numbers and claim it is a sign that the end of the world is upon us.


The left's reaction to today's jobs report completely typifies the above statement. The bottom line is the employment news is good and getting better. And yet, we see the doomer Kool-Aid out in full force.