New Personal Income Report
From Reuters, via Yahoo! News:
Reuters - February 28th, 2005 U.S. consumer spending was unchanged in January, below expectations for a small rise, as purchases of motor vehicles and parts declined sharply, a government report showed on Monday.
The Commerce Department said personal income fell 2.3 percent in January after hitting a record in December on a big dividend payout by Microsoft Corp. Excluding that one-time dividend impact and other factors, personal income rose 0.5 percent in January compared with a 0.6 percent gain in December, the department said.
Emphasis added, because it's quite pertinent given that this piece was linked from Yahoo's home page this morning with a title along the lines of "Personal income drops," or some such thing.
This is why it's so easy for so many people to have a warped view of the economy; you can tout numbers, but you can undercut good ones simply because they weren't as good as the month before (regardless of how atypical that month had been), or simply because they weren't as good as analysts had expected. Thus, if we expect great and get good, the news is labeled disappointing, and those who skim the headlines get a negative impression where one does not belong.
» February 28th, 2005
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