Does good news matter?

Created
Sat, 15/07/2023 - 02:00
Updated
Sat, 15/07/2023 - 02:00
It looks like we’re going to find out I don’t know if it’s morning in America, exactly, but we can at least see the faint glimmer of dawn on the horizon. Even the relentlessly negative media has started to make note of it — some of them, anyway. We are still seeing headlines by newspapers and cable networks which seem to be determined to temper any positive developments with caveats and forewarnings. But the coverage has shifted a bit in the past couple of weeks which must be a welcome development for the Biden administration. Take, for instance, the Politico Playbook from Thursday which starts off with this encouraging paragraph: “President JOE BIDEN is having a good week. A really good week, actually.” It goes on to lay out a whole bunch of good economic news, starting with the fact that the inflation number is now down to 3%, the lowest its been since March of 2021 and observing that in Washington and on Wall St., a consensus is building that the economy may have turned the corner. They did have to add that the Fed may do one more round of interest rate hikes anyway, but the betting is that it will be the last one unless something happens to change the trajectory. Of course they also reported that even as they roll out their “Bidenomics” campaign message, there is still trepidation within the administration about declaring that the crisis has passed because of the Supreme Court’s sabotage of the school loan…